Club Run - Through the Woods

Hello blog lovers.

This evening we went straight through the middle path of the woods. It's a nice uphill challenge for everyone.  Mind you, where ever we go it's a nice little challenge!  But through the woods it's always a little extra challenge.  We are so very lucky where we are, because of the lovely woods, around us.  Although we are not that far from the Metropolis that is London, having this wonderful country side just on our doorstep is just so great, we can party in the heart of London and be back in our home town within 30 minutes, and just a few minutes walk away we have this lovely quite woody space to walk, run and breathe in!

Last week, the first week after the beginners graduated, we had 30 runners in group 1.  I wasn't sure how many we would have this evening.  Maybe some of them would move up this week, maybe some more of out beginners will come and join us!  After all the leaders gave out a brief description of the routes/pace/distance we all gathered at our stakes for a count of heads. There were 23 of us.......at the beginning, after a coupe of re-counts!  So after a quick safety brief we set off for Dog Poo Ally.  When we ran through the tunnel Sherry was just by the left hand path with her group, doing a safety brief about running through the woods.  I stopped my group just on the middle path and waited for the rest of my group to join us.Once there one other person had joined us, she was a little late, which means that we had 24 intrepid explorers running through the woods this evening.  We were going up through the middle of the woods,  I had run this route on Thursday morning and I noted how long it took us to get right through the woods, up the hilly road to the top, just to the point where we have to cross over.  I knew we had plenty of time to get there before the light started to really fade too much.  It is quite a hill to do, the middle path isn't steep but it does just go on and on with no break! I was blimmin struggling, that's for sure!  It was very humid and I was 'glowing' for Britain!  It never feels like it gets easier.  Even after all these years you think it would! I even had to have a little walk up the hill, just for a few seconds, just so that I could look behind me and see where the back runners were.  But what I didn't tell them is that once we got to the top of the woods it wasn't quite over with the hills!  We were going to pop out of the woods into the posh housing estate! The one with the big house that inspired me to write almost a romantic novel of one of my solo runs!

I had them all run to the top of the hill while we waited for the back runners.  I don't think any of them wanted to do a loop back to them as they would have to run back up again!  It was still fairly bright out and I thought that we could probably continue our run through Scadbury Park instead of running on the pavement.  We just had enough light to run through there, we crossed over Leesons hill and then continued our run  on the pavements.  I was feeling totally knackered by then!  In fact, just running up that first hill in the woods I was blimmin knackered, so you can imagine what I was like just as we hit Birchwood Road.  Thank goodness it was all down hill.  I called back to my sweepers, J.J. and LittleJ, that I will not stop now and I would see them all in the rec.  I didn't have middle sweeper but with most of the group keeping up with me while the rest of the group was with J.J. and LittleJ we had everyone covered.

I ran with the front runners till we got back into the rec.  There were already a couple of groups back, including Michaels group 2!  It was Michaels debut leading today!  It makes my heart swell when I think back to last year when Carol and Michael first joined our beginners course and now Carol getting a pb with her parkruns and Michael becoming a leader!  Brilliant!

My group collected on the green, Michael had taken the spot on the patio, the other half of the patio had already go the nursery's wooden fence out, the bit that my group normally take! It's just as well the midges are not out yet!  We would have made for a tasty treat for them!  We had a stretch out, and a count off!  All present and correct!  No one was lost in the woods!  A lovely run, and now with the warmer weather and longer days our runs will be going through the woods!

Geeky stats for you.

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