Tag Archives: parkrun

Last long walk before Château-Thierry

March 14, 2015TrainingChâteau-Thierry 24 hour race, Generation UCan, parkrun, Reigate Priory parkrunadmin

In two weeks time I will be walking laps around a 2,400 meter road circuit at Château-Thierry in France for 24 hours.

So today was my last long training day before I start to taper towards the race.

It also happened to be parkrunday – the one day a week that I go for a run. As with last week I decided to walk approximately three hours to a parkrun that I hadn’t done before – Reigate Priory parkrun, and then run 5km before walking another 4 hours back home.

Last weekend I set the alarm for 4:30am on both Saturday and Sunday and both times the alarm woke my wife. Whilst she is extremely supportive of the ridiculous amount of time I spend walking (over 100 hours already this year), she wasn’t too happy about being woken up at 4:30am two days in a row. In fact she wasn’t too happy about being woken at 4:30am just once.

So this week I tried the ‘natural alarm’ – drink two large glasses of water before going to bed and the call of nature will wake me in about 6 hours. And it worked perfectly – I was awake at 4:25am. The only problem was that the ‘alarm’ also went off at midnight and again at 2am!

IMGN0594_thm Anyway, I had decided to run Reigate Priory parkrun which was about a 3 ½ hour (or slightly more) walk from home. So I decided to drive a few miles and parked the car in Thames Ditton, starting my walk at exactly 6am. My planned route was 14 miles meaning I should arrive at parkrun with about 10 minutes to spare before a 9am start, but I didn’t count on taking a ‘shortcut’ which went in the wrong direction and added almost 2 miles to my planned walk!

At 8am I realised that I was going to be late and I increased the pace by 45 to 60 seconds per mile. Good training, but when it came to running my hamstrings were tight and my 5km parkrun was a minute slower than last week.

I actually didn’t arrive at parkrun until 9:05am but fortunately they were running late and hadn’t started yet.

As soon as I had completed my run – in a slow (for me) 24:50 – I purchased a bottle of water from the local cafe and mixed in a sachet of Generation Ucan to give me some energy for the return trip, and then headed off towards Dorking. After walking 3 hours to get to parkrun, my plan was to walk west for an hour or so before heading back towards Thames Ditton via Leatherhead. This would give me a bit of variety rather than returning via the same route I had already walked, and would also enable me to avoid going back up the steep hill out of Reigate. As a race-walker I prefer to avoid hills if I can.

The walk back to Thames Ditton was a little longer than planned (22 miles) and took almost 4 ½ hours, but in total I completed a little over 40 miles for the day and am satisfied that my training has me in good condition for Château-Thierry.

Todays map — Todays route showing my ‘shortcut’ on the way down to Reigate

Somewhere past Feltham

March 7, 2015Trainingparkrun, Stains Reservoirsadmin

My wife asked me this morning (at 5am) where I was going for parkrun today.

I couldn’t remember and replied that it was somewhere past Feltham – a small understatement!

It was Upton Court parkrun that I was heading to – a 3 hour, 15 mile walk there followed by a 4 1/4 hour, 21 mile walk home.

I had decided to run Upton Court parkrun today as it was the closed parkrun to where I live that I hadn’t run previously.

I left home just before 6am which meant that I would have to walk a good pace without getting lost in order to get to parkrun before the 9am start, and covered the 15 miles in 2 hours and 52 minutes. In order to stay on track I used Google Maps on my cellphone to give me directions and arrived at Upton Court Park with 15 minutes to spare.

After parkrun I decided to take a different route home, intending to walk around the southern side of the Stains Reservoirs, but ended up missing a turnoff and walking around the top of the reservoirs instead.

I did get the opportunity though to walk up onto a walkway that goes between two of the reservoirs and took a few photos, but as the walkway was going in the opposite direction to home I decided not to take the walkway, and saved it for another day.

Stains Reservoirs — You could be excused for thinking this is a lake, but it is actually one of the Reservoirs

And on the way home I walked through Bushy Park and couldn’t resist taking some more photos of the deer:

Connecting parkruns plus some sightseeing at Olympic Park

March 1, 2015TrainingOlympic Park, parkrunadmin

It was parkrunday again today, and for the fourth time this year I headed out towards North East London for a parkrun. This time I ran Barking parkrun in 22:14 – my best time for the year.

I arrived early – 8am – so started the day with an easy 5km walk before parkrun. But the main plan for the day was to walk a 15 mile loop taking in the venues for all four of the parkruns I have run this year in the North East and East London area – Barking (today), Valentines (on Valentine’s Day 2 weeks ago), Wanstead Flats (on New Year’s Day), and Mile End (3^rd of January).

Today's map - four parkrun venues and a detour through Olympic Park — Today’s map – four parkrun venues and a detour through Olympic Park

What I didn’t intend to do, but ended up doing anyway, was take a detour and check out Olympic Park in between Wanstead Flats and Mile End, but I am glad I did. It was the first time I had seen Olympic Park and what an amazing venue! I took heaps of photos, some of which are below, but as a result of that and a little bit of getting lost, my planned 3 hour 15 mile walk ended up being 23 ½ miles in 4 hours 50 minutes.

When I sent my wife a txt message to tell her that I had got lost but was now back at the car in Barking, she replied that maybe we should change the name of this blog to “Richard gets lost in London” as that seems to be a recurring theme of most of my long walks 🙂

Overall I was happy with the walk. I faded a little over the last 60 to 90 minutes, but I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since breakfast at 6am, and in total I covered 30 miles today so maybe that was to be expected.

The original plan for this weekend, until I got sick a month ago, was to race the Bourges 24 hour race in France. Based on today’s walk I am glad I decided not to do the race as I don’t think I am in the shape I was in before getting sick. But hopefully two weeks of long walks followed by two weeks easy will see me in shape for a good 24 hour race at Château-Thierry in 4 weeks time.

Photos from today: