Tuesday 25 July 2017

Club Run - Back to Normal

Hello blog lovers.

After almost a month a 7:30 starts due to mob matches, awards evenings etc, we are back to our normal start time of 8:00 pm.  I was also looking forward to going through the woods too.  I can't believe that we have lost a couple of weeks of not going through our woods due to rain, but today we just had to do it.  The daylight hours are already going down, it seems totally wrong to me that we are already losing daylight hours when the kids have only just started their summer holidays! I am just going to have to make the most of it.

I wasn't sure how many people were going to turn up today, as I just mentioned it is the school holidays, people go away.  So after I had told them about my route and all the other leaders had told them about their route we made our way to our post.  There were 18 of us!  A great number, we have been down on our numbers lately, but I am sure the weather has been a huge factor in that.  J.J. was back, LittleJ was back, in fact the whole gang was here.  Carole and Michael have decided to go up to the next group.  Well, Michael is a leader in group 2 and he can run in group 3, but he is supporting Carole in group 2 today.

I wanted to do a bigger route with the group 1's, go from one side of the woods right over to Goss Hill side of the woods.  I knew that it was going to be a challenge, but I know that we can do it, if we all just give a little extra. I know we can! We ran in through Dog Poo ally and then just stopped just at the map.  "Ok all!" I said "Make sure you all memorise the map in case we get lost"  Just a little bit of humour for the new guy!  Yup, we had a newbie running with us.  He found us on the 'tinternet, and came along for the first time this evening.  He is a good runner, I think maybe he will be group 2 or three.  But I am sure he will suss out exactly where he will be comfortable running.  That's what I love about our club, we have so many groups to accommodate runners from 13:00+ mi/m runners to to the 7 mi/m runners.  In fact we have decided that we need a new group too.  A group 1.5 because group 1 has started to become a group of 2 halves!  We just need a little step from group 1 to group 2 to help them on their way up to speedom!

So the first hill is the more gentle of todays hills,  it is the longest of course, but as its such a nice gentle incline I am sure everyone will do fine, it will hardly be noticed!  We ran up there and then we waited for the sweepers to come along.  i noticed that the light was fading real quick.  I really can't believe that that our days are getting shorter.  I don't want to even think about that!

Once we were all together we ran along the side of the woods, pass the woodmans place and then along the top of the woods.  Slowing down at each crosspaths so that we don't lose anyone on the way. We were making good time, I was thinking that maybe we could all make it along Goss hill before running back to the railway lines.  We ran along the top of the woods, pass the school, and then on to Botany Bay Lane.  I had sent the faster runners along the path first while I waited for the rest of our group to catch up.

When we all were at Botany Bay Lane I had decided to give Goss hill a miss, I thought that maybe it will be just too dark by the time we have to go through the last bit of the woods.  But J.J. and LittleJ said that it was fine!  I should split the group into two, I take the faster ones down Goss hill, J.j. and LittleJ take the rest and we can meet at the little bridge.  So that's what we did!  Everyone had the best of both worlds then.

We met up again at the bridge.  We just had the last bit of the woods to do.  We only had about another half mile to do, so I kept the same two groups, faster ones and the slower ones to finish off and then to meet back at the rec for a head count, and hopefully I will have a count of 18 still!

Well we all got back to the rec, and we had a count up, the first wave there were 12 and then there was the other 6 making all 18 of us back safe and sound!

A great run!  I totally enjoyed it. I think everyone else did too!  Here's our geeky stats, oh and I forgot to turn it off when we got to the rec, we had done our warm down stretches before I had realised!  But I do know that the faster half of the group had done 3.45 miles!





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