Hove Park Run Revisited

Better late than never, a brief report on our latest trip to West Sussex for the 9:00 am Saturday morning Hove Park Run.
We drove up on Friday night in our camper van to a secret location 8 miles north of Brighton. Why pay for a camp site when you can park overnight up a quiet lane for free? Settling down for an early night after eating on the way there meant that we didn't even bother to set the alarm clock, which turned out to be a big mistake when, at 8:34 precisely Lin checked her watch on waking, and less than 2 minutes later we were on our way to Hove, in full panic mode.
The last thing you want to do having driven 3 hours to a race is sleep through the start!
Thanks to an unusual absence of hay wagons and horse-boxes, we made it to Hove Park in record time, and even had a couple of minutes to attend to various necessities like warming up, before the race got under way, bang on time.

Unfortunately, my GPS watch didn't have time to lock on, so I was unable to check on my pace any time during the race, which felt a little disconcerting. I probably rely too much on the GPS, but this time, I didn't really need it to tell me that there was no way I would be able to keep up with the front runners. Unlike the previous Hove Park race, there were some seriously fast people there, and it was as much as I could do to maintain 6th place behind a group which steadily pulled away and out of sight, out of mind. After a while, I dropped back into 7th place and tucked in behind a guy who set the pace for the next 4k. I hung on grimly for the 2 laps until I sneakily overtook him just at the line for 6th place. All this time, I had very little idea what pace I was at, and, given the less than ideal start, was pleased to see that I had achieved a new Park Run PB of 18:09.
After handing in my number to the recorder, I jogged back a short way to see Lin finishing in a very good time, and also a Park-run PB (by over 30 seconds) of 19:58.

We jogged around another lap to cool down, and then had a very enjoyable breakfast at the park cafe surrounded by the other runners. Many thanks to the organisers of the Hove Park Run, there is something really special about the event, and we thought it was well worth the 6 hour round trip!
Next day a 17 mile Long training run in the New Forest turned into a 20 mile run , thanks to a bit of a cock up on the navigation front, but its all good experience!