There was an opportunity to get festive for Clint Taylor at the ‘Slow and Dirty‘ which took place in Sturminster Newton just before Christmas. That meant digging out his shiny red shorts, festive waistcoat and Santa hat for the 19km trail run along a disused railway line through Dorset and Somerset.

The railway line used to run from Bath to Bournemouth and the course was fairly level. It runs alongside the River Stour valley and passes the restored Shillingstone station and the village of Blandford on the way.

Interestingly, the race isn’t called ‘Slow and Dirty’ because of the route. The name actually comes from what the regular users of the railway line called it. That was due to the trains stopping at multiple villages, meaning they never seemed to make good headway. Also, because it wasn’t all that profitable, the carriages weren’t very new or clean.

There was a lot of rain on the day of the race and the course was muddy and waterlogged in places but a lot of it is on hard-packed stony paths. Clint was running it with his friend Zoe Meaton, who he did the ‘Run to the Sea’ 50k with in October. They did the ‘Run to the Sea’ ultra in just under six hours and really enjoy doing races together.

They completed the 11.76 mile route in 1 hour 52 minutes and 50 seconds which put them in 110th and 111th positions. It was a great fun way to finish the year for Clint and he said he’d definitely go back again next year, although perhaps more for the bakery in Sturminster Newton that the run itself.

A man known to many in Bournemouth AC circles, Graeme Miller, was competing in the Canicross race with his dog Chester. They also ran the same 19km route, getting round an a very impressive time of 1 hour 11 minutes. They started off really quickly at around 5:30 pace and were under six minute mile pace for each of the first six mile splits.

Chester didn’t seem in the mood to go hard the whole way though and slowed down a bit after that. They still did enough to secure the trophy for second place though, coming away with a superb average pace of 6:03 per mile.

Clint has done well since joining Bournemouth AC and had managed to register a best parkrun time of 20:40 at Kings Park in November. He’ll no doubt be on a quest to improve on that in 2026 and will perhaps be looking to get down to under 20 minutes. If he keeps training hard with the club, there’s no reason why he can’t achieve that and more.