Race for life tomorrow down at Tilgate park in Crawley. When I signed up for it I was thinking it's going to be like a busy parkrun (bearing in mind my local parkrun generally has about a hundred or so runners on a good day). Um, no!!! Angela from the gym who has organised our 'team' reckons there'll be close to 4000 there!!!!!!
Wish me luck, I don't like crowds!
Don't worry Beads. I did the RfL at Northampton 2 Sundays ago. I'd never done any run with even 1 other person before (antisocial - moi?) and was pretty nervous especially as I knew that my friend that had talked me into it was planning to zoom off into the distance but it was brilliant. The atmosphere was amazing, everyone was friendly and no-one minded whether you ran, jogged, walked, skipped or any other way of getting round. I got round respectably (my friend was gutted to do 62 mins - she was hoping to break the hour!) and we raised a lot of money for a very good cause. I will definitely do another. So relax and enjoy. Good luck 
Hey Beads did Race for Life In May 2013 Glasgow and there were 13,485 took part. it made running difficult but it was briliant fun and great atmosphere.
Good luck
Hi Beads I'm owning up here to a serious hang-up that I suffer with. I don't like crowds, I don't like running with others. I love my Parkrun but I opt to do duties every time these days instead of running. So 4,000 people leaves me cringing but I'm sure you will do very well, just run with your elbows sticking out, shouting "Out of my way, I'm coming through" 
All the very best of luck.
Erk! I don't like crowds either, and am wondering why I signed up to do Race for Life again... Though I did enjoy the atmosphere both times before when I did it, so I know I will be fine once I get going. The worst bit for me is the parking and finding the start - for some reason that I don't remember, I'm going to a different venue that I'm not familiar with. Why did I do that?!
Bet you have a great time too - although there were a lot of people there, it was fine really, and the only bit where it felt a bit crowded was the start, and that's for a very short time. I just stayed at the back of the section I was in, so it was fine.
There were two and a half thousand of us! And I reckon about a thousand of them under estimated their time, runners were at the front (18 to 25 minutes), then joggers (25 to 45 minutes), then walkers. So expecting to get round in hopefully just under half an hour I placed myself at the junction between runners and joggers (pushing my way forwards as much as I felt was 'polite'. It took about 20 seconds to get through the start gate and about a kilometre to get into my stride without tripping over people going slowly with their kids attached to the end of their arm with about 3 feet between them!
But yes I enjoyed it, it was a great run, mainly through the woods, not too hilly, more gentle undulations compared to the hills round here. I was passing other runners all the way round, even up the final straight, whooohoooo when that crowd cheered the accelerators really kicked in!
Final time, on their clock, just over 27 minutes, on my garmin 26:47!!!!! But garmin also says it was only 4.72k, I may need to tweak the map on mapmyrun onto the actual footpaths.
Still on the high!!!!!
That is a brilliant time.
I'm doing RfL on Wednesday and I don't like crowds either. I feel a bit daunted as I cannot find out the route and I do like to know where I'm going. Also will probably not manage to run all the way as we have just been on holiday and although I did do some running, I must have lost a fair bit of fitness since a fortnight ago.
I will console myself with the thought that its to raise money more than an actual race and if I have to walk some of it then so be it.
W5R3 TIME GULP
Gulp! 20 minutes?!
Gulp, that's the intervals finished
Does it matter if I leave 3 days (gulp)! Between runs?
Week 2 completed - Week 3 starts Wednesday - GULP!
