Club Run - A Country 3 Miles!

Hello blog lovers.

Today it was my club run. I love running with my club, the social aspect, the cajoling, the camoradarie, and the encouragement to move up to group 2!

As our illustrious leader is still away in South Africa and so we had another group leader to go with today. She thought she would share the love, the leading love, I will explain in a minute, but first off its the 'Call Out'. Its where the group leaders tell us how far we will be going and where and how fast, just in case of those that are ready to move up to the next group and judge and see if thats where the want to be.

Our group 1 leader said that we will be running a 3 mile route of around 11 m/mi and no hills! No one from group one let the leader know that we usually run around 3 and half to 3 and 3 quater miles. I was planning on doing my best, as its a shorter route, so I will just try and keep going.

Now, sharing the love. Our group leader suggested that we all take part in leading, leading at our own pace that we usually do in group 1. So the first volunteer started leading at her pace. She was pretty fast actually, but I was thinking, its only 3 miles, we all can handle it!

Mind you, when I think of it, when the group leader mentioned going up the path behind the school, I should have realised that is about 2 miles away, and then we still have to turn left and head of on the homeward bound, which would be well over another mile! So it looks as if we will be doing our usual 3 and half miles.

When we got to Crofton Road I was expecting to to turn left and head on back to the meeting point, but in fact we turned right and headed on up towards Orpington, with the intent of turning left at Addlington, one of the other routes that we do! Now I know that is going to be well over 3 miles, in fact it will be over 4 miles!

I kept up as best as I could, there was a couple of other ladies with me as well, and even a chap as well! But the other lady that I was running with for the first 2 miles must have found her 'zone' because she was way up in the front of the group, which by now had spread out. We all knew where we were going by the time we reached the Off licence on the corner, which was about a mile from our finish!

I was thinking that I may of pushed it at the beginning and I wont be able to do my sprint, at least that was what I was telling myself. There is no-way now that I can run this bit with out pushing myself. I do it on every run that I do now, just that last few feet, just push it, run hard, its nearly all over and I can rest! So, I sprinted.

A stretch back at the club house, and we all discussed our '3 mile route' which turned out to be 4.55 miles! A 'Country' 3 miles!

A great run today, and I know that all in group 1 enjoyed it, we sometimes need to be pushed a bit, and reminding our leader of her '3 mile route at 11:30 minute miling" she said that she didn't remember saying 3 miles!  Well I hope our usual leaders don't use that as an excuse, or maybe they should......!

Geeky stats.