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The very first votwo 'Pudding Catcher' took place today (16th Dec) at Fairthorne Manor, Southampton and the bad news for fruit based deserts everywhere was that not only did he get caught by the winner with about 1km to go but over 100 small 'Puddets' were also consumed with custard by finishers after the event!

The format of the race was based on a 3 lap cross country running course that took in fields, woodland and a short run through a giant teepee (!) totalling 6.5miles (10.5km) of challenging terrain. The carrot in this event was actually a Pudding (elite runner Andy Morgan Lee of Southampton) who carried a bounty of £100 cash on his head for the first runner to catch him. With the pudding on a generous bonus scheme of his own to evade capture this was always going to be interesting.........

And so after warming up watching the Kids race (The Pudding Eater) at 10am the main field set off at 10:30am after being mercillesly taunted by the pudding during his warm up.

Straight into the lead of the race was Mark Le Cassick with Nick Buis in hot pursuit. These two soon ran away from the chasing pack. After lap 1 they were about 40sec behind the pudding who was finding the costume 'interesting' in the narrow wooded section of the course.

On lap 2 Le Cassick started to break Buis and set off all alone on a mission to catch that pud and secure the cash. Meanwhile votwo's own Andy Blow was starting to reel Buis in with Southampton's Graham Bungay moving through too in 4th. At this point the pudding was starting to tire and a catch was looking likely on the 3rd and final lap.

The ladies event was proving to be a real battle between Natasha Swan, Lucy Jones and Jo Orr who were all in close contention with each other at the half way stage.

With competitors spread all over the course Mark Le Cassick closed in on the pudding with less than 1km to go and despite a final bid for freedom Pud's number was up and Mark was £100 better off. Le Cassick also took the full distance race win in 38min 42sec. Blow had now caught Buis and they were running stride for stride about 30sec down on the leader coming towards the line. In the end Buis had the power to run away from a tiring Blow and sneaked 2nd overall, both given 39min 14sec at the finish. 4th in was Bungay with Paul Ashley 5th and votwo's own Ironman of the year Steve Osborne in 6th.

In the ladies event only about 90 seconds separated Swan, Jones and Orr who finished in that order across the line with Natasha being the only lady under 50min in 49min 22sec, great times in very cold conditions on a difficult course.

At the presentations Le Cassick received his £100 prize from a humbled pudding and all the competitors enjoyed a bowl of hot pudding and custard (no relation of the racing pudding!) - just what was needed on a really cold day before the votwo take down crew got to work on packing up the final event of 2007.

As is now customary at votwo events 'For Goodness Shakes' provided the much needed post race recovery nutrition for the competitors with their milkshakes on offer (Thanks to Jodie Shann and his team for that) - visit their website if you want to learn more about the great products they offer - link on the right.

Results from the event are on the link on the right and also the results page of events and adventure section too. A selection of great photos from Dave, Tessa and Rachel are also available in the gallery - link on the right.

Thanks also to everyone who competed in this and every votwo event in 2007 - we have a whole host of mad, challenging and action packed events planned for 2008 and a brochure will be available very soon. If you would like one in the post please email your postal address to events@votwo.co.uk with 'Send me one of those damn brochures' as the subject line.

Meanwhile the events team are going into hibernation for a few weeks and would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a race packed New Year 2008.