Club Run - Out In Front!

Hello readers.

Group 1

It's club night, the night we can all meet up and chat and run and chat!  Brilliant stuff! You like the title?.....Me....out in the front!  Yup, I was right up in the front of the pack!  Mind you I was leading!  I also wasn't always in front as I let some of the faster runners do their thing!  I was quite pleased about leading, because I think I did say that I would be running in group 3 again this week, RefMichael was leading but he was planning a particularly nasty little hill!  So I was relieved!

Mind you, I had a nasty little hill in mind too, not as bad as St Marys Cray where RefMichael was taking his group 3.  My group were heading for Tillingbourne Green!  We needed some hills.....ok I needed some hills!  Did I mention that I have a half marathon not far off now?  So anything that can just push me out of my comfort zone has to be good.  Which is why, if I wasn't leading I probably would have gone with RefMichael, even with that awful hill!

It felt like old times with the most of the old crew back in group 1, we also had one of the beginners in our group, just to have a look and see how it all goes.  She hadn't been on Saturday so thought she could do some 'catch up' running.  I think she enjoyed it! She had a smile on her face when she left!  Our first hill was of course Birchwood.  The council have been busy up their doing things to the pavements and stuff, but we still managed to get up there without going on the road for too long.  It's all up hill, we came straight out of the gate, ran along Crossways and then up to the top of Birchwood.  It took nearly 7 minutes, I made a note as I wanted to let the newbie know just how long that first bit of running took, going up hill too!

We were quite nicely together, not to far apart from the front to the back.  We had a bit of a breather and then turned right, we walked for a bit to stay nice and warm and then continued with our running.  I could feel my knee hurting a bit.  I am sure it's where I fell over on Saturday, tripping up a step.  I think I must have short legs or the step was particularly higher than the usual steps!  It wasn't so bad, but I cracked my knew on the next step, I managed to use my hands to stop my whole weight coming down on my knew.  I laughed it off, but I am sure I can feel it!

I was strangely looking forward to Tillingbourne Green.  It's a nice longish slope down before you got to go up.  So you can really get warmed up before running back up it!  That down hill bit really does feel good, you just don't have to do anything, the slope down does all the work.  It helps to get you all ready, warmed up, psyched up, ready for running back up the other side.

We did it, I did, I didn't quite get to the very top without a little walk, maybe next time!  Once we got back to the lamppost at the beginning of Tillingbourne we had another breather.  "Who wants to do some hill training" I asked.  Well, there were seven of us in the group, only 3 of us did two reps of the hill, Church Hill Wood, is the name of the little short hill that we ran up twice.  The newbie just flew up there!  Well, she is a lot younger than me!  Mind you Auriol was also in front of me as well!  So now you know which three braved the twice up the hill!  Not that I am bragging of anything!

After that its the long straight road, its flat with a nice down hill and then.... just because we needed the extra distance to make a proper run we ran up the other side too.  To the memorial hall.  We all did it.  Ok, it's not easy, nothing in this world is easy, you have to put the effort in if you can.  I know I have been totally guilty of not putting an effort in.  Sometimes it was because I was ill, and probably shouldn't have been running, other times, most times, it was because I was feeling lazy!

When we got up to the top we had a breather and then we ran all the way back to the rec as a nice tidy, tight group!  I enjoyed it, even those hills, it wasn't a particularly fast run, but I still had fun!

Snow Leopards seen
in Tillingbourne Green

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