Well what a busy few weeks it has been !
I missed my first parkrun in a long time last Saturday in order to run the London Spitfire 10k (more on that later), and I really did miss it – the run and the people.
I’ve been running consistently – through rain, sun and everything in between. And feeling consistently a little bit under par…….. I’m hoping that this will turn soon and I’ll have some good runs.
Last week we visited London for a few days. I’ve been a few times over the last few years, but for work so have seen very little apart from the tube and the inside of an office! This time we were doing the touristy bits with my son. Lesson learnt that two days walking around sightseeing and visiting museums is not good race prep. For someone who thinks they are fairly fit, I certainly felt the extra activity – very stiff achy legs and hips. Anyone else get restless legs on a night too??
And how do you all cope with the dust / dirt / pollution in the city? we both felt we struggled on Saturday because of this.
London Spitfire 10k
What attracted us to this race? The medal !! My OH really wanted the medal, and was interested in the setting of the RAF museum.
It is a 10k road race, starting and finishing at the museum with two laps around the local roads. The information we’d been sent stated limited parking at the museum and despite getting there very early there were no spaces left, but no matter we soon found a place to park on the street. Walking to the entrance a police van stopped us to ask what the run was (you’d have thought they’d have known!!).
An unexpected highlight was being able to walk round the museum as soon as we got there. After a couple of days in very busy museums, it was a pleasure to be in somewhere very quiet and was a great way to spend a bit of time waiting for the start.
The start – a brief talk in the hanger, in front of the Lancaster, before being walked outside to the start and we were off. I wasn’t expecting the route to be the most exciting, and I was right. What I hadn’t expected was for the run to be totally on pavements, dodging other pedestrians! This also meant that despite there being a fair amount of marshals there were still many crossings of side streets that didn’t have anyone on them – meaning we had to keep our wits about us and look out for traffic.
It was a very warm day, warmer than expected, and this certainly affected my run. My OH has been struggling with an injury and hadn’t run in over a week so we had decided to run together.
Finish time: 56:08
Would I run it again? Probably not – but more due to the distance to travel (4 hours!) than the run itself. It is a great one to say I’ve done. The museum is worth a visit if you are even remotely interested in planes / helicopters / machines ! (would be a fab one for kids too).
So this week, I’ve run Monday and today (Wednesday), it is a club track session tomorrow, parkrun Sat and Bawtry 7 mile trail race on Sunday. Busy week ! The new school term started today, so at least that means I can get back into some kind of routine – and I always feel better with that.
a mile run 
Leave a Reply