Hello blog lovers

It's club night, and I am feeling good! So no feeling sorry for myself thinking about my running buddies out running.  This week I am here!  I was back in lead and planning a route.  This morning the weather was just perfect, I even managed to get out and do a cycle ride, my laps of Blackbrook!  I think I may even have got a PB (I said that about the Harvel, until I checked my geeky stats!)  But this afternoon the heavens opened!  I mean they really opened!  Somewhere in the south there were streets flooded, with cars just poking above the water!  Not in my immediate area, but we had thunder rumbling around and rain! Which meant that my planned run through the woods could quite easily be shelved for the week!  But after a few messages about on Facebook I decided that we are going to attempt the woods!

I arrived at the rec and i realised that I had forgotten my leaders running bib! Oh well, I am sure they will all be able to see me!  So I told them all where we were going, Carol, with her lovely shiny new looking shoes!  We are so going to have to 'christen' those today!  There were a few other shoes that cold do with a baptism of mud as well!  Eight of us running today, and I'm never any good at remembering names, but the numbers I can remember! We had a couple of people that hadn't run through the woods before, so for them and also for making sure everyone remembers the 'rules' I went through what we need to call out!  "what do we say when we see roots?" "Roots" they couroursed, "What do we say when there is a low branch?" I continued "Low branch" they unisoned, (is that a word?) "The woodman?" I shouted "Here, Old girl, he's there" was just one of the answers!  Now that girl knows me!!

We started our run by going through Dog Poo Ally, and we turned right.  It's going to be a a climb up to the top by the railway line.  Although I hadn't checked out the distance of the this route, I was kind of 'guestimating' that it was just about 3 miles, or maybe just a tad less.  It needed to be.  Running through the woods, especially when it has been raining, is quite hard, a lot harder than just running on the roads.  It gives your ankles and your calves a good work out too, as the uneven ground gives you a challenging platform to run on!

I kept them all running to the top and then we had a proper stopping stop!  Just to catch our breath.  Then we walked for a bit before continuing our run.  I had in my mind that we could run two woods today.  I like taking group 1 through two woods, it seems as if we have ran quite a way when we tell people!  Who are we to say that we only just touch on Scadbury!  When we were just running up to Leesons Hill we could see up ahead, running on the road, group 2!  I don't think they saw us as we ran through the woods.

The run through Scadbury was a little different for me, because this will be, I think, the first time I have run this way!  Usually I am running in the opposite direction, and you all know what I'm like when directions change, I get totally confused!

I just had to check with my sweeper that I was heading in the right, and not heading off deeper into Scadbury Park!  Once that was all sorted we ran through the park and came out on the fourway junction.  We were going straight across and down Manor Park to pop back into the woods at the end of the estate.  After admiring all the house along this road, we did the cheeky little 'flick' of a hill to go back into the woods.

After this point, I told them all, that there were no more hills to day, at least none that 'they'  would be struggling with.  Everybody was doing so will well indeed.  And it was, virtually all down hill "Ok Barbara" she said to me.  "are you sure there are no more hills" she said.  i think Tanya knows me too!  Just because I try to get people to eat!

Once we got to the middle path of the woods we all enjoyed the lovely run down there.  All the way!  Ok I had a quick stop to let the others catch up.  We tarted as a group and we will end as a group, maybe with just one or two minutes between  I had to get a picture of us all by the memorial commemorating Francis Joseph Frederick Eldman, for giving the woods to the National Trust.  They could so easily been a block of flats by now, or even a little housing estate!

We continued our run all the way down to Poo ally and then back to the rec where we did some stretches.  It was then that I noticed Carole's training, I think we finally have got them dirty!

Carole's shoes!

A great run today, with a great bunch of girls, here's the geeky stats. It shows actual moving time, not how long over all (I still got the auto-pause on!) but we got back to the rec about 20:58, so perfectly timed really, as long as we get back before 21:00 then I think that is perfect pacing.