Staines 10k 2018

My first Staines 10k.  Someone in the grocery store who told me she's run this race ten times, but now is a spectator and watched her daughter run it this time.  I mentioned the excellent conditions we'd had and my time and we agreed that different weather would have made it a very different race.

As it was, it was very fine.  I got my 'recovery' cappuccino and, with the bacon, eggs, and flour (for pancakes) I'd just purchased, headed back home for a victory brunch.  I'd rushed back home for some last bit of visiting with friends in for the weekend from out of town. 

It had been a very good day.  I got a PB for 10k, beating my previous time by well over 3 mins.

This was a consistent 7:30/mile pace, with not a trace of pain.

I have to say I like this race, not just because it is so well organised by the Runnymede Runners (it is also great because of that), and not just because it's flat (that too), but because there's a great energy to this day, and I definitely want to do it again, including the part where I help to set up beforehand.

The whole thing is just a lot of fun.

Bears Rails

One of my Runnymede Runners coaches first showed me this route, described by him as one of the toughest Windsor Great Park has to offer, and I agree, it is challenging.

I ran the route again last night, and the dirt road down the first big hill had a fresh layer of soft, almost pillowy, sand that made it really nice to run on.

This route has deer, Egyptian geese, and far fewer people on it than most runs in the park, especially for the part where you pass the place on the map by the pond labelled 'Bears Rails'.

The painting above claims to be a painting of that place and I can kind of see the resemblance of what I know of it, where you come around a bend at the bottom of the sandy hill, through some big trees just before coming around to a big field on the way to The Long Walk.

Why am I talking about this route?  Well, it is quite beautiful and serene and you usually have the place to yourself, geese and deer aside.  And last night it made for a great run, confirming once and for all that I'm recovered after my marathon.

As if I needed this: I did an 8:30 min/mile handicap last Thursday; and an 8:15 min/mile hill session on Tuesday this week.  Bears Rails clocked in even better at 8:14 min/mile, my fastest around that route yet.

I think I read on one of the sites that it was some kind of workhouse in Victorian times, but I've never actually seen the old building.  I made off-colour jokes at first, calling it 'Bear Grylls,' because the name kind of sounds like that, and even joked that you'd have to drink your own urine at one point (as in the infamous BG episode).

But all that aside, it's just one of the great runs of the WG Park, even going past the old millstone around halfway around, on Queen Anne's Ride (at the end of which is another copper horse statue).  I had joked that that was where the wheel was invented because the millstone in question, in the village, looks like the stone wheel from the comic "BC".

And so we finished up just to one side of the polo fields, across the long expanse of lawn that sits between those fields and Savill Garden, ending a beautiful cool mid-spring day on a good pace and a definite high note, in the excellent company of Runnymede Runners.