Sunday Silliness

Back to usual today with a trail marathon. My first LDWA event for ages, which came with all the expected mud, hills, stiles, footbridges, fields, steps, kissing gates... and a variety of animals including sheep, llamas, curly-haired cows, turkeys, a cockerel and a very cute muntjack deer.

I ran (and admittedly walked a fair bit too) with Rob who is excellent company. He did his first marathon at Edinburgh last year and today's was his 56th! We were both in the mood for a slow one, enjoying the autumn countryside views and generally being easily pleased at what a lovely route it was (apart from the very heavy mud in some of the fields and the surprisingly cold rain for the last 5 miles).

And there were plenty of the usual suspects there today making it great for catching up with folk I hadn't seen for a few weeks.

Super Saturday Silliness

It's that time of year again, when I take a bunch of sixth formers that I've been coaching to run a 10K. For the past three years we've done Brighton in November, but this year that clashed with the Newcastle marathon (more on the toon next week). So we did the Mo 10K in Greenwich park - handily local at least. It's part of Movember (where men around the world sport a moustache throughout November to raise money - in the UK they're affiliated with the Prostate Cancer Charity).

The students mostly wore Pudsey-bear-style headbands, a few went with a mo too and I ran in fancy dress as Supergirl. Just for my own amusement. It was a very convulted course, lapping around the park and taking in a few small (though surprisingly knackering) hills. It was well organised and quite a feel-good event. I certainly enjoyed it and it's always good to see the students being all chuffed with themselves. Nice to have the Vice Principal along too, joining in the silliness.Particularly impressive were the guy who ran the whole thing in bike leathers and helmet and the chap who ran it all backwards - in under an hour!

Taking a break

So, I usually blog after a running event and haven't blogged for over three weeks. Yup - I just had two whole weekends without a race in them. And I didn't run very much either, but enjoyed taking a break to let my legs recover from putting in a fair few miles this year. We went camping in St Ives for the half term week. It was fantastically relaxing. Lots of eating, sleeping and drinking, a couple of beautiful coastal walks, lots of wandering along the beach watching the surf and moseying around the town. We visited our favourite cafe (the Yellow Canary on Fore Street) and pub (the Sloop) every day. And ok, I did go running a bit while we were there too, as well as doing lots of, er, other exercise for cross training too.

This weekend I had to go to college for Open Day on Saturday (very odd for a teacher to be working on a Saturday, but it's only once a year). Then I took the train up to Norwich for the Marriotts Way Ultra on Sunday. It's a fairly low key trail run, which goes out of Norwich for 18 miles on a disused railway line, then we can refill water at the turnaround point before heading back the way we came. The trail has seats at mile intervals, each made from bits of old railway track. I thoroughly enjoyed it, spending a lot of time chatting with various people on the way out and lost in my own thoughts on the way back. Surprisingly, the reason for the lone return was that I was in the lead (out of everyone, not just the ladies) and was actually the first to finish. Not fast at 5:42, but a really pleasant day. It felt good to run all of it without taking any walk breaks, but a bit sad that it's the last ultra for me this year - no more now till January. Fortunately there are plenty of marathons to keep me out of trouble in the meantime.