The sun was out. I had my caffeine fix and mars bar. I had my funky pants on and I was ready to go. The route for today was 8 miles, and I was running with Egerton Running Club. That’s one in three running clubs that I am a member of.
I met up in Egerton – and while we stood around in the cold getting satellite fix, some of the other runners lay prone doing some stretching…. (I have never been any good at that, I am terribly uncoordinated and liable to fall over an do myself an injury, so I have never bothered).
Off we ran, quite a number of little hillocks along the route. I only have three speed settings, ultra slow, slow and normal running speed, but I do enjoying pushing on up hills. I’d like to say that it was my dedication to hill training, but it is more that I am not super keen on struggling up a hill for a prolonged period of time so I prefer to get it out of the way as soon as I possibly can!).
There are lots of brilliant things about the club. It is big enough to have lots of people to chit chat to, and small enough that it is social. And we don’t take things too seriously, so we have a lovely half way stop – this time it was dried mango and something new – fruit pastilles, plus some water. As ever, I never pause my Garmin Fenix 3 – ever (unless I go inside and at risk of getting scatty GPS)
We hit a few different paths and country lanes – many of them I haven’t run before – and so that made it super interesting. One of our runners – Alison – is training for London Marathon so she has been putting in the long runs and often runs to and from the starting point for the sunday run. She’s doing brilliantly, so am very excited about her debut marathon. I am doing the marathon backwards (that is not running backwards, but rather starting at 2am from the end and finishing at the start in Blackheath).
Later on in the day, me and NotaRunnerGirl met up with friends in Brixton, ate a lovely Mexican meal, ate cake, drank coffee and had a meander around Brockwell Park. Was great to catch up with them and hear what they have been doing – including a Cross-fit championship in Copenhagen last year, and my friend recovering from a major skiing accident (ouch! – but glad to see he is on the mend).
It is not long now til April 1 when me and some friends return to the coast to continue where we left off in Hythe. We will run 200+ miles to Bournemouth over the course of 4 days. Hills, lots of coast, and no doubt beer and fish and chips. One of the great things about running so far is that eating is almost guilt free. We also got around to booking some accommodation for the final night in Bournemouth, where we will finish this section of coast. So, when we get there, we will be really happy but probably also a little sad that this little section of our UK coast adventure is over…… but we have plenty of coast left to run, so the sadness won’t last long.
If you would like to support our fundraising for RNLI you can donate here http://www.justgiving.com/hythetoIOW
The Untraining Ultrarunner 