Monday 8th July 2019 :Club run with the Stragglers Monday night “Little Feet” run at The Swan in Hampton Wick. 5 miles
Didn’t run on Sunday. Knackered after long drive on Saturday plus loads to catch up on back home. You can’t beat yourself up. Important to get a good life to running balance. So a good opportunity to make an appearance at the Stragglers Monday night group. The meet in the small courtyard at the back of the pub started as usual with announcements from Anne Wood which include a list of the organised groups going out that night. I went for the targeted 8.30 pace group. There were 8 of us in total with Vaughan and Dave leading. Although my park run times have been comfortably quicker than 08.30 recently its different if you are not in racing mode and for whatever reason I found the pace too quick even though we were averaging slower than advertised. But although I was running at the back and dropping off the pack I was keeping in touch and felt OK. We went into Home Park following the perimeter leading up towards Hampton Court. The run would have been great but our usual route was blocked by fencing left over from the recent flower show and we had a rather boring and tricky diversion until we got to a gate leading out onto Hampton Court road.. After that the run was much nicer. We went into Bushy Park via the Lion Gate and looped round to garner some extra distance. Completed 5 miles by the time we got back to the Swan with my average at 8.51 pace. Nice work out followed by a couple of beers and a cycle home before dark. So nice to be out in the light evenings.
Tuesday 9th July: Club run with the Stragglers Thames Ditton Group. Around 4 miles total.
The TD group meet at the Thames Ditton Cricket Club on the edge of Giggs Hill Green, which forms the start and race village for the Harry Hawkes 10, Ditton Dash 10k and the Quicksilver Hampton Court Half Marathon races. All of which we organise through Quicksilver running.
Merran and Jim Sell are the organisers and it’s a great group with around 30 regular runners. Each week has a different theme and tonight it was the monthly timed mile. For various reasons we had less runners than usual but around a dozen of us set off for a steady run up to Hampton Court Palace where we run and out and back along the river path for the mile. It was a humid evening and I felt quite warm by the time we had covered the 1.5 miles to the start. On the count to go set off strongly and felt good at the half way turn. On the way back Ruth caught me and we were side by side for a quarter of a mile before she pulled ahead. Tried to dig in but she was too fast for me. Finished at 7.54 which was good and I think the same as last month. But on my Garmin the course shows as 1.05 miles with a mile time of 7.33, which would be much better! I asked Jim how they measured it. He said a couple of them went out and used their GPS watches. Hmmn. A bit sketchy as Garmins can give quite significant variations. As it happens mine is usually spot on. I’m going to get my surveyors wheel and check it sometime just out of interest. Still whatever, a good result and a nice round 4 miles overall.
Thursday 11th July: Stragglers Hawker Centre main club night. around 5.25 miles total.
The Stragglers Thursday night has always been the main club night, but in recent years numbers have fallen off and it is sometimes no bigger than other evening groups. Nevertheless it has a special significance and is the one night I will always go to unless there is a serious reason to miss it.
It was another warm sunny evening and 11 of us set out under the leadership of Alan Maudsley to run 5 miles at around 9mm pace. We follwed the river to Kingston, the first mile coming up just before Kingston Bridge, then crossed over to the Hampton Wick side to run in Home Park (for me the second time in the week. Tonights run was unimpeded by barriers and we did a very pleasant loop taking in the Hampton Wick ponds on the return. the last mile got a bit quicker and the group fragmented as people picked their own pace. I recorded 5.28 miles at an average of 8.47mm. Another good run.
Saturday was of course another parkrun, this time Kingston 3.1 miles. A very warm morning and i was feeling a little bit bleary after a night out in London watching Neily Young and Bob Dylan in Hyde Park. Hopefully this accounted for the slowest time I have recorded recently at 26.24 when i have consistently got under 26 minutes, but never mind at least I got out and did it and it was a reasonable 8.30 mm pace overall. Will try to improve next week. For the record this was park run number 436 for me and my age grading was just over 65%.
Sunday 13th July. Home to Hampton Hill. About 4.5 miles. A family group of us went over to watch one of the summer concert series at Hampton open air pool. I drove over and parked a little way from the pool gates in a residential street and left the car to pick up in the morning. Some drinking was involved over the course of the evening! We saw an 80’s band called ABC who performed a catalogue of hits “Poison Arrow to your heart?”, and it was all pretty good. Sunday morning I set off for an early run to retrieve it. Down Kingston Hill and through the pedestrian centre, then into Bushy Park until the cut through that leads out to Hampton by the pool. I was just ggoing steady at about 10 minute pace and it was all very enjoyable. About 4.5 miles.
So a total distance forr the week of 22 miles over 5 runs, which is not two bad as a starting point before we move into marathon training proper.
This Running Life 