Nice sunny morning, was up at 5 as other half had to catch a plane, managed even to get the work "to deal with " emails below 100 for next week so by 8:30 was raring to go.
I thought I'd try running the Race for Life 10k route which I'm doing in 2 weeks time, including sussing out parking etc. This is the Edinburgh RfL which uses the road round Holyrood Park and Arthur's Seat. I've done the 5k a few times but this year signed up for 10k. It starts down by Holyrood Palace with a 100m climb over the first km up to Dunsappie Loch. I had to slow down to a walk on the steepest bit. Once up by the loch it's reasonably flat with nice views and by about 4k you come to a point where you have the castle in one direction and the Pentlands in the other.
This was the bit where I wasn't sure of the route but at some point you loop round to pick up the road to Duddingston which runs about 70m below the park road so I just headed across the grass. By this time the day was warming up and the smell of coconut from the gorse bushes reminded me of cheap sun screen. Round past the loch, through Duddingston village and on to a bit of main road I didn't know but it was reasonably quiet at this time on a Sunday morning.
Next turning point was on to the Innocent Railway track (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinb.... It's quite enclosed with not much of a view but I enjoyed hearing the church bells from Duddingstion Kirk drifting across the loch on the other side of the wall. It's also a bit of a long steady climb - I think that may be the inclined plane in railway terminology - but i just kept plodding on. At the end it goes in to a tunnel but I wasn't sure if that was part of the route so took the path. Another steep bit and another walk I'm afraid.
From there it's downhill back to the start which after 8k is almost as hard on the legs as going up hill! Set myself a finish target of the barrier by the car park and just kept going.
By the time I got back to my car I'd done 10.6k in 1h 13m. I must have cut a few corners on the RfL route as it should be a full 10k. I'm not sure how seriuos the RfL 10k will be and whether people walk it. Plenty do on the 5k but I'm assuming there will be more real runners on this one. So with 2 weeks to go it's a case of just keeping up with the training.
You may very well smash the sub 60 mins on race day!!
Loch Ness Marathon and Festival of Running (10K and 5K fun run)
My first 10K :)
The Final Olympic Park 10k.....
2nd 10K of the week!! :)
🏃130bpm on the way out --140bpm on the way back🏃
