I Moved Up!

Hello blog readers.

So club run this evening and all is well!  In fact it were brilliant!  It was the first time that I have left my leaders bib at home and followed a leader instead! But, but.....not only that I moved up into group 2 as well!  The amazing thing was, Illustrious Leader was leading group 2 this evening!  It felt like old times!

In group 1 we have Charley back with us from injury.  She has already been trained as a LiRF and is raring to get back leading.  We are going to having two other leaders soon as well, which means that I will be able to move up three times a week!  Although I do love leading, especially when we have complete newbies and the graduates joining us for the first time, I do need to push myself too, try and keep up with the next group. 

I was a bit apprehensive, it's been a while since I have had to keep up with a leader, after all, in group 1 I could choose when to have a cheeky little break, or even send the faster runners on a little loop back.  But this evening it would have to be me keeping up with everyone, which is why I opted to be be no.2 sweeper with Selena.  No pressure then!  Actually there was no pressure! I felt really comfortable to be back in group 2 and was warmly welcomed, where as in group 1 I got "I thought you were moving up to group 2".  I really was looking forward to it!

So we started, out of the gate and turned left and then left at the end.  We were heading for Jubilee park!  It's so good to be going through the parks and woods again!  Everyone feels so much happier!  It seemed that most of the groups were at least touching on the woods this evening, even Charley was taking her group 1's just up the right hand path!

I was keeping pace with them pretty well, I was deffo wise to choose to be sweeper though, but I was so enjoying chatting away to Selena and Trish!  Trish was doing exceptionally well considering she had done a night time bike ride on Saturday of 100k! Typically english she said "My thighs are feeling it a bit"  You gotta love our British underwhelming responses! 

Running through Jubilee park and we saw one of the faster groups coming from a different path, and we pulled over to once side to let them run ahead of us as they merged on to the path we were running along.  We do look pretty awesome as a club when we are running along.  We even were spotted by a young lady when we ran passed the Bickley Manor, she was enquiring about joining us!  We carried on pass the manor and then turned left to run up Blackbrook lane!  IllustriousLeader likes to make our run as interesting as possible.  running all along Southborough lane just looks almost soul destroying, as it's such a boring road to run up.  Blackbrook lane is bad enough! So she had a plan to run through 'The dump' i.e. Southborough Park (the Old Boy and his mates all knew it as the dump) But it is a rather pleasant little park that we can cut right through and then were were ready to run up Chesham!  We were going to run to Shepperton road, and then to run along to Tudor Way and back.

I must admit, I was feeling it!  It was a good pace, one that I can do and have done on a parkrun when I am trying for a pb!  But it has been awhile.  I know I am going to enjoy moving up in group 2 when I am not leading!  Oh, yes, I will still be leading group 1, there's no doubt about that, I so enjoy leading and encouraging all our runners to do their best, get out of their comfort zone and to achieve the little goals they make!  With 4 of us very soon with LiRF for group 1, we can all enjoy leading once every 4 weeks with then pushing ourselves on other weeks, or just enjoy running in group 1 for a social!

It really was a brilliant group 2 run, I for one am so pleased to have Charley back, so that I can move on through the groups!  The banter, the chat, the friendships run through the entire club, not that I will ever get to group 12 or even up to group 5, but who knows where I could end up running! 

Geeky stats. The distance was a little more than expected for a group 2 but we did it!