Bushy Park Time Trial & Ambition Life Lee Valley run

Well it couldn't last - 5 weekends at home with no races and Martin and I were both getting fidgety. My injury was steadily improving and the miles were starting to build up again, so a weekend away with not one, but two events sounded like just what we needed.

Friday evening saw us travelling up to London to camp overnight at Chertsey ready for the Bushy Park Time Trial on Saturday morning. This really is a fantastic event - it's free to enter, you register on line and once you've done it you never have to register again. It's held every Saturday throughout the year and the website is brilliant - up to date results appear soon after the event which not only tell you your position and time but whether it's your first event, and if not, what your PB is and if you've beaten it. http://www.parkrun.com

Martin & I did it in April 2005, so all we had to do was show up at 9am....and run. Despite being so far from home we weren't the only enthusiasts sporting Yeovil vests. Ex Maiden Newton Runner, Brian Mountjoy Row was staying with his daughter (17 minutes away at a warm up jog!) and joined us on the start line.

The route crosses the park to the southern boundary and then follows an anti clockwise loop around the perimeter before turning south along an avenue of trees to the finish. The paths are mainly quite smooth, easy running and it's almost completely flat. After his excellent run at the Street 5k on Wednesday evening, Martin decided to take it easy and jog round with me. I was hoping to beat my Street time but I had my excuses ready, lack of fitness, lack of racing, legs still tired etc. etc. to recite when I finished - in 21.26, 23 seconds outside of Wednesday's time. From there it was an easy drive to the Sweatshop, specialist running shop in nearby Teddington, where as BPTT runners we received a 10% discount and consequently were quite a bit poorer by the time we left the premises....................

Next day we arrived at Cheshunt station at 6.55am expecting the Ambition Life 7am start to resemble a YTRRC 7am start, i.e most people don't turn up till 7.10am and then you might start at 7.30 if you're lucky. This was after all billed as a 32 mile training run, NOT a race. Needless to say, I was struggling into my shoes and Martin was searching for change for the car park when the other runners set off into the darkness. Fortunately we managed to catch up the stragglers before they disappeared to find out where we were going!

The run followed the Lee River south towards London and was quite simply described as "follow the water"! As it was an out and back course the option was to run whatever distance you chose, some people were planning marathon distance, others were going "all the way". We set off without any clear idea of how far we were going to do. We ran a mile or so with Ambition Life Managing Director, Rory Coleman, with Martin quizzing him enthusiastically about the prices for various events and why they've gone up so much! I think Rory was probably quite pleased when we pushed on ahead and left him in peace!

The route was not quite as scenic as we expected, but it was flat, easy running and being completely new to us, we enjoyed it. We reached the promised cafe at 10 miles which was one of the options for turning back....and decided to go on. We reached the 13.1 mile point at a lock (the name of which I have deleted from my memory).....and decided to go on. And then we were so close to the turning point it would have seemed like wimping out so we ran right on to the Commercial Road Bridge, which according to my GPS was just over 16 miles.

The first few miles of the return route flew past as we ran with Graham, a Benfleet runner, who was carrying a pack weighing about 6kg as he is in training for Marathon des Sables. We listened in awe to his description of doing 80 - 90 miles a week, cross training, working and all fitting around his young family. Apparently there's this thing you can do called "getting your arse out of bed early". I'm not sure it'll catch on in the Lascelles/Cummins household, but it was interesting to hear about it. (Graham had completed the Ironman at Sherborne in 11.15). It was quite a relief when he decided to push on and we could drop back to a more comfortable pace!

By now the sun had come out and although still chilly, it was a beautiful morning. We kept going at a steady pace and the miles flew past as we ticked off various landmarks from the run out. We both "hit the wall" at about the same time - with 10 miles to go. From then on it was just a case of putting one foot in front of the other and telling ourselves what an excellent training session we were putting ourselves through.

Finally we crossed the last road and knew we had less than 2 miles to go, one final problem: As it was dark when we set out we didn't recognise the final stretch and we weren't sure at which point to exit the towpath! We made the right choice and as we headed towards the level crossing which stood between us and the station I remarked to Martin that I just KNEW the barrier was going to come down before we reached it......and sure enought it did, so we had to crawl up the steps and over the bridge to reach our destination!

We took about 5 hours 20 in total and although it had been really tough at the end we were extremely chuffed with that. We haven't even been running 30 miles per week for the past 2 months, and even better my Achilles was absolutely fine and still is today. Might even be able to fit in another race or two before the end of the year......................