I woke up to a beautiful sunny morning! So much better yesterday with all that awful rain! Anyway, dry January broke and my morning discipline broke! Four days now without doing my sit ups and planks etc! Tut. Weak, lazy! So today, I signed up for the Paddock Wood Half! Now I have a focus, now I have something to work towards, a goal! I sent Naggy a photo of my entry just so that she would get a movie on and enter too, we have both been talking about it for blimmin ages now!
So, this morning, I picked up Tracy and we drove to the rec. We were going to be going 'off piste' today, somewhere where we have never run as group 1 before. In fact it is so 'off piste' that we had to all pile into two cars to drive to the start of our brand new route. IllustriousLeader was taking us through Scadbury Park. Yes, I know we all 'touch' on it when we do our runs, but we are going a little further into the park this time, we wouldn't normally be able to get to the middle of this park in the time that we have normally. So the cars were necessary.
We drove to Leesons hill and into the first car park on the left. I didn't even know this car par existed as it looks like it should be the entrance to the school. But it's a dual entrance with the public car park just on the left as we turn in.
Once out of the car we walk to the grassy path and start our run........it's a bit wet! I think this run is going to be a tad muddy! There were eight of us in this mornings run, IllustriousLeader, Tracy, Kay, Carole, Auriol, PinkladyJo and Paula. Not bad for a Thursday morning! We were all looking forward to this new place to run. I.L. had told us all about the moated house! Here's a picture of it, I grabbed the image from the interenet! I forgot to take my own photo!
What a lovely place, I can just imagine what the house looked like, before the Townsend pulled it down! Now why would they do that? Still, a fascinating place.
We continued our run around the park, covering some of the paths that I had done years ago when I ran the Chislehurst 10k, and we also ran on the other side of the delightful game keeps cottage that is being restored. We only ran for about 2.75 this morning, it was very wet and muddy and we were not the fastest this morning, but I must say, it was one of the most loveliest routes that we have done, I think we should do this one again when it's all dried up!
This is all of us at the top of a particularly steepish hill! The view from here was beautiful, we were next to this lovely house, again it's an empty house that has been boarded up! Who wouldn't want to live in a place like that!?
On the route that we had to go to get back to the path there was a tree that had fallen over night! The friends of Scadbury Park, or the local parks people were busy cutting it away so the path cold be opened again. The thing is, we really needed to go around there, So we said that we would traipse around it, in among the brambles, the prickles and the holly! I.L. went first then I followed her. In the meantime the busy volunteers cut away through the branches and the rest of them went underneath it! The easy way!
We were not far from the car park after that and we finished our run with a quick stretch. Some of the ladies went on for a coffee after but we in I.L.'s car had to get on with the rest of the day! Here is our geeky stats.
Thursday Track
I was looking forward to running track this evening. Stretch my legs a bit, start my training for the half marathon! The session was 3 x 1600m with 2 mins rest in between. In my mind all I could see was 3 x.......only three lots of something! Even I could do that, 3, 1, 2, 3 and then it's all done. Simples. The thing is, I don't do 'new money' I have no idea how far 1600m is. I couldn't even remember how many times around the track it is, I think maybe I didn't want to think about it. But still, it's only 3 times, right?
Naggy and I were just a tad late, they had already started on the 10 minute warm up, marathon pace lap. So we started to run up to the start line, ripping off our top layers so that we could join in. I had remembered to turn off my auto lap thingy on my Garmin so that I can try and see how each of the laps I do! I know it's only three, so I should remember to push the buttons.
After the 10 min warm up with had a couple of strides out and back and then straight into the session. PhysioMikeTheMod with his new JuniorCoachPear ably assisting him we began our session. There seemed to be loads of athletes today, so many. Some coming for the first time too. I just did my own pace, using a new technique to remember how many laps I had done! .......oh, if you want to know, it's based on something that I heard PhysioMiketheMod say ages ago, which is to help you keep your arms relaxed try touching your thumb on your finger, not squeezing just touching. So on the first lap I touched the first finger, the second lap I touched the second and so on! It worked well! I managed to run all four laps of the track and not get confused as to how many I had done, which usually after running even just 1 lap on the second reps I used to get confused as to how many I had done! After each lap JunioCoachPear was saying "Well done" each one, and high fiving her dad and brother as they ran passed. She herself is a runner, a speedy runner.....just like her dad and brother! As soon as she is old enough she will be running with us on track as well!
The faster runners were lapping me after I had done one lap, they were so going to be finished before I had even end my second rep! It was quite a tough little session actually, I didn't want to stop or even think about slowing down. I kept on running around,with my thumbs and fingers busy counting each lap. My friends all encouraging me as the pass me by! It's the only time I do get to run with the big boys and girls, when we are all contained in the track! Of course, they had finished their 3 rep just as I had finished by second rep! The session was over, I didn't manage to do the third rep of 4 laps, but I had a cool down lap, with all the other faster runners running behind me to have their cool down lap too.
So here is my geeky stats, and my splits were not too bad for the two laps I did, which was 11:23 and then 11;30. I wished I had managed to do the third rep, just to have a look and see if I managed to keep it steady. Maybe next time!
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