| Wednesday dawned bright and I got in a very pleasant 5 miles mainly on tracks through Richmond Park. Combination of tired legs from Sunday and usual hills and dales kept the pace slow but that wasn’t the point, was it? Averaged around 10.30 mm.
Spent the day working on The Harry Hawkes and Ditton Dash races. Suddenly they are only 6 weeks away! Cycled over to Surbiton at 5pm and swam at the Nuffield fitness centre. 1000m steady crawl which is 50 lengths of the very nice 20m pool. Then on to a meeting with Pat Kennedy at the Thames Ditton Cricket Club to discuss arrangements for the Harry Hawkes raceday on June 24. Thursday started early with a Kingston Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting at Kingston College. The Chamber has been great for meeting with local businesses and given me the opportunity to discuss our races and how they can have a positive benefit for the Royal Borough. An interesting aside was the webcam they had running on the 11th floor meeting room, which showed a pair of nesting Peregrine Falcons and their chicks. These birds are very rare in the UK and the College is one of only four nesting sites in London. Met up with Dominic who is a member and fellow Straggler and Paul who volunteers with the rotary club and used to run with the Stragglers. Also had the opportunity to chat with Rachael Stewart who organized sponsorship tor our Kingston Half marathon through her firm Russell Cooke Solicitors. Thursday evening off to The Stragglers for the main club meet. Quite a decent turnout on the night and set off with Tim Wood’s group after the warm up session. It was a perfect evening for running and we followed a very interesting route as part of “Tims Tours”. Across Ham Common then through two narrow high walled alleys past the German School to come out on Petersham meadows. Through the tunnel under the road which leads into the gardens on the slope up to Richmond Hill. Up the steep paths to the top, coming out near the Roebuck pub with one of the best views in London as the Thames winds down in the valley below. Its only a short distance into Richmond Park where we passed through the Pembroke Lodge gardens, stopping to here the story of Ian Jurys Bench and to view St Pauls Cathedral from King Henrys Mound. I have to admit I did not feel on best form and was beginning to flag, so was looking forward to heading back down to the Ham Gate and the homeward stretch to the Hawker centre, probably a couple of miles, but no, Tim headed out in a different direction to take us to the Isabella plantation. I struggled along at the back, but it was worth the detour. The plantation was brimming with colour, with the Rhododendrons and Camellias all out in full colour. The bank of mauve camellia’s reflecting in the Still pond is breathtaking. Great run but definitely not feeling on top of form. Guess still feeling last Sundays half in my legs. About 6 miles in total but did not set my watch on this one. Friday off so fitted in an evening cruise on the boat up to Hampton Court. Rather overcast but amazingly had the river to ourselves with hardly any traffic other than a huge gaggle of raucous juveniles having fun in kayaks around Ravens Ait. Very nice diversion and end to the week. What is Saturday without a parkrun? I could describe it but the extract from the results page below says it all. Bushy parkrun results for event #734. Your time was 00:25:04. |
| Congratulations on completing your 387th parkrun and your 116th at Bushy parkrun today. You finished in 487th place and were the 421st male out of a field of 1390 parkrunners and you came 3rd in your age category VM65-69. Take a look at this week’s full set of results on our website. Your PB at Bushy parkrun remains 00:22:50. Congratulations on your fastest time this year. |
| You achieved an age-graded score of 68.15%. For an explanation of age-grading, please see the WAVA age grading overview. |
Well pleased with that! Afterwards stayed on to meet with a group from Stragtri where Mike Lapworth, Dave Olson and Barbara Crowe gave us advice on managing the transitions in triathlon. We fixed up a couple of tri stands so we could rack the bikes and talked and practiced how to go through T1 (Swim to Bike) and T2 (Bike to run). Will put all this into practice on Sunday 27th May at the Intotri Senior long event which is a sort of Super sprint/Sprint Tri event.
So all on plan at present. Got to have a look at some goals for the summer autumn period. Am seriously thinking about an Autumn marathon. This would keep my unbroken record of a marathon every calendar year since 2000. But I am sure a number of other things will crop up in the meantime. Keep on running guys!
This Running Life 