Today’s walk was all about holding a decent training pace for 50km on the back of yesterday’s 48km (30 mile) walk and I am please to say “mission accomplished”.
I headed out early (6:30am) and took about 20 to 30 minutes to get going properly, but I often find that I start slowly when it is dark. I didn’t really have any plan as to where I was going to go but stuck to the roads until after sunrise and then simply aimed to complete a big loop around Surrey.
Shortly after daylight I turned into a sports field near Motspur Park that I recognised from a month or so ago. Last time I had gone through the park it was dark and I had been unable to find the exit (which was in to a cemetery!) that I was supposed to take in order to head the in the direction that I wanted to go, and I ended up completely lost. This time I had the benefit of daylight and discovered that the reason I hadn’t found the exit I wanted last time was that it didn’t exist. There was a 3 meter high fence where I thought the exit was. Today it didn’t matter though and I exited on the other side of the park and headed towards North Cheam.
After a while I arrived at Nonsuch Park, the home of Nonsuch parkrun, and Nonsuch Palace which was built in the era of King Henry VIII.
Nonsuch Palace
Nonsuch Palace
Leaving Nonsuch park I then followed various “Green Trails” and parts of the London Loop for the next couple hours ending up in Chessington where I found myself in the grounds of an NHS facility and accompanying housing estate which I walked around for maybe 20 minutes before I could find my way out.
Back in Kingston about 5 miles before I wanted to be I headed over the river and back through Bushy Park and then home via Teddington Lock.
Deer in Bushy Park
Teddington Lock Weir
Lockmasters building
Teddington Lock
Teddington Lock Bridge
All up I completed 50km (31 miles) in 6:24. Only a couple seconds a mile slower than yesterday’s pace.
My nutrition today was exactly the same as yesterday with the exception of the banana at the start as I had only just eaten breakfast.
I now have two rest days due to work commitments and will then take it easy through to my next longish walk which will probably be four hours on Saturday or Sunday.
When I ran my first 100km race in 2007 I took 3 hours longer for the second 50km than I did the first. It was the first time that I had run more than 55km and I had never followed up a long run with another long run the following day. In fact I had never heard of the concept of Back to Back long runs.
The idea of back to back long runs is that on day 2 you are running on tired legs, but because you have had a nights rest in between the two runs, you don’t take as much out of your body as you would if you tried to do the whole distance in one day.
Ever since that first 100km race I have been a big fan of Back to Back training and I try to do at least one Back to Back session before any long race, even as a walker.
So this weekend was my first (and only) Back to Back session during my build up to the Bourges 24 hour race at the end of February.
And as today was Saturday, priority 1 was parkrun. So I decided to drive to Dartford, run their parkrun and then go for a walk beside the lower part of the River Thames out towards Gravesend.
Map of Lower River Thames area
But as you can see in the above map, and the map below, I ended up going in completely the opposite direction.
Todays walk
To say that my navigation isn’t great would be an understatement. But part of the ‘adventure’ is that I go for a walk and just find out where I end up. Today though, I went the wrong way right from the start.
The forecast was much better than expected – cloudy and windy – and as it was reasonably warm when I headed out on my walk I didn’t wear gloves or take a jacket. Two hours in to my walk I found myself sheltering under some trees during a torrential rain shower and seriously thinking of heading back to Dartford and going home. For about five minutes it absolutely poured down but fortunately, just as the heavens opened I came across a tree covered footpath that was in the lee of the wind and therefore I was able to remain 90% dry.
It’s raining and I’m lost!
Five minutes after the rain started and it suddenly stopped and the rest of the day was almost sunny at times.
London Loop sign
When I am walking I follow a combination of roads and trails as the mood takes me. There are plenty of walking trails around London and I often come across these signs which mark the London Loop which comprises of 24 separate walks that circle London and today I found myself on various parts of the London Loop on a number of occasions. Sometimes the trails are quite muddy and other times the trails are sealed footpaths.
London Loop Sign
On the London Loop
On the London Loop
After getting lost a few times I found myself in Danson Park, Bexley – the site of the Bexley parkrun and the historic Danson House.
Bexley Heath parkrun sign
Danson House
Danson House
Eventually (just short of 4 hours in to my walk) I made it to Thameside and the River Thames. At that stage I thought I would head up river for a little while before heading back to Dartford but after a mile or so I came across a sign that said Dartford was 10 miles in the opposite direction and a quick calculation indicated that that was almost perfect for the six hour walk I was planning. So I turned and followed the river down towards the Dartford Bridge.
It was an interesting walk and a very different part of the River Thames to what I have walked before. On the northern side of the river it appears to be mostly farmland and the southern side (the side I was on) was mostly industrial interspersed with housing, and later on to farmland.
Passing Erith I was surprised to find as many as about 15 shopping trolleys in the water/mud.
I was also serenaded by a trio of local kids who sung “walk 500 miles” as I walked past them.
After passing Erith I was mostly on farmland trails through until I turned away from the river not far from before the Dartford Bridge.
Almost at Dartford
The Dartford Bridge in the distance
In total I covered 30 miles in 6 hours and 8 minutes during todays walk and got to see some parts of London, particularly the lower River Thames, that I really enjoyed – hence all the photos.
One last thing that I wanted to mention is nutrition. For years, whenever I have run or walked further than four hours I have used coke and sugary foods (Haribos sweets for example) to provide energy for my activities. But as I mentioned the other day, I have been trialling a new sports nutrition supplement called Generation Ucan and today I had two sachets of Ucan, one before I started and one at 3 ½ hours, plus a banana at the start, a mandarin at 1 and 4 hours and half a bag of dried black berries at 2 and 5 hours. And I was fine. I had plenty of energy for the walk and didn’t have the coke craving that I used to have during long workouts.
I have to admit that I did drink two cans of coke and eat a chocolate bar and some biscuits during the 70 minute drive back home after my walk, but that was what I call ‘lunch’.
I can’t remember the last time I was so cold. It was a mild 4 degrees when I left home at 4:15 this morning but it was raining, and after a couple hours in the rain I was wet through, and frozen.
To add to my problems I had lost one of my gloves after about an hour (more on that later) and at one stage I was so cold I contemplated stopping and catching the tube home. But today was Saturday, and then means parkrun day, and if I had caught the tube home I may not have made it to a parkrun, so I kept going.
My morning started at 2:48am. The alarm was actually set for 4:30am but at 2:48 my wife, Ruth, woke me to ask if I had turned down the central heating before going to bed (just 3 ½ hours earlier) as she was hot. Our central heating is on a manual system and with the bedrooms being upstairs, the bedrooms are always warmer than downstairs. And no, I hadn’t turned the heating down.
So I got up and went downstairs to turn the heating down and then found myself unable to get back to sleep. Thirty minutes later I decided to get up, have some breakfast, and then get an early start on my walk. This meant that rather than heading west to the Upton Court parkrun as I had planned, I would head north east up through London to Pymmes parkrun – about a 4 hour walk.
Just as I was leaving home it started to rain but I had dressed suitably (three long sleeve layers plus a lightweight running jacket and hat and gloves) so that wasn’t a problem.
I headed in to Richmond Park, one of my favourite places to train in all of London and something I will cover in future blog posts, with the aim of doing a half lap, possibly seeing Rob Young (Marathon Man UK) who runs a marathon a day, usually in Richmond Park in the early hours of the morning, and then exiting the park on to the A3 at Robin Hood Gate.
I have run and walked through the park in the early hours on many occasions before, but I probably haven’t attempted to leave the park at Robin Hood Gate at 5:30am, at least not in winter, and was surprised to find the pedestrian gates locked when I arrived. The gates themselves are probably about 15 feet tall so there was no way I could climb them. I knew that there was another gate not far away that went along a path that I had never followed before. So I decided to find out where that path went – which was to another locked gate. But this gate was beside a low fence that was easily climbable so I climbed the fence and followed the path into what turned out to be the Richmond Park Golf Course.
The problem was that when I arrived at the main entrance to the golf course, the tall wooden gate was also locked so I continued walking and eventually found myself on the 4th tee in the dark and in the rain.
By this stage I was totally drenched and starting to shiver because I wasn’t walking fast enough to keep warm. I decided to backtrack and managed to climb the stone wall at the entrance to the golf club but as I jumped down off the fence I caught my left hand and tore my glove. I was out of the golf course however, and I headed up the A3 towards London. I had to dispose of the glove at the next rubbish bin which in hindsight wasn’t such a great idea as my left hand became extremely cold and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t feel my figures.
Years ago, whilst watching the Tour de France on TV, I saw that the riders often put newspapers up the front of their cycling jerseys to keep warm and then disposed of them when they warmed up. As a runner and walker I have done similar in the past but used plastic shopping bags as they are much lighter, so when I got to Wandsworth I found a plastic bag on the ground and I turned that in to a makeshift glove. This helped but by this stage I was very cold and nothing was going to make me warm again.
I like to take photos when I’m out walking and one of the reasons for starting this blog is to give me a place to display those photos. But walking in the rain and in the dark, photos don’t turn out very well but the following are a couple photos I took as I walked through London City:
London Bridge taken from Southwark Bridge:
The Great Fire of London 1666 Monument: This is on the site where the Great Fire of London started in 1666.
And also a part of an ancient Roman wall which is opposite the Tower Of London:
Unfortunately these are not great photos and I’ll get better photos another time – when I am walking in the area in daylight perhaps.
By the time I had made it into London I realised that I wasn’t going to make it to Pymmes parkrun so decided to head through Tower Hamlets and up to Mile End parkrun. I have been trying to do a different parkrun each weekend and Mile End was the closest parkrun that I hadn’t done.
Reading the ‘History of Mile End Park’ sign in the park was interesting and I have added a photo of the sign here:
The history of Mile End Park
Running parkrun was enough to warm me up for a while and I caught the tube back to Richmond after the run. An hour sitting on the tube in wet clothes though, and I was shivering again by the time we arrived at Richmond Station, so rather than catching the bus home I walked the last 3 miles along the Thames and past Ham House.
Ham House built in the 17th Century
In total I ended up walking 25 miles and running 3 today.
The other great news from today’s workout was that I have been experimenting with a new nutritional supplement called UCan. Normally after any long workout I have a craving for Coke, but not today. Today was the fifth time I have used UCan and I have had the same results each time. Interesting, and something I will discuss further in the future.
I headed out early (6:30am) and took about 20 to 30 minutes to get going properly, but I often find that I start slowly when it is dark. I didn’t really have any plan as to where I was going to go but stuck to the roads until after sunrise and then simply aimed to complete a big loop around Surrey.
Eventually (just short of 4 hours in to my walk) I made it to Thameside and the River Thames. At that stage I thought I would head up river for a little while before heading back to Dartford but after a mile or so I came across a sign that said Dartford was 10 miles in the opposite direction and a quick calculation indicated that that was almost perfect for the six hour walk I was planning. So I turned and followed the river down towards the Dartford Bridge.
