First of all I have to admit that I was feeling somewhat apprehensive about this run. It's purely psychological, but 10 miles seems a long way. After all, it's roughly the distance between towns in England, and if I'd tried to run 10 miles in a straight line in any direction where I grew up on the island of Jersey, I'd have been in the sea!
To add a little more to the mental challenge, I was going to try something new. My wife suggest that she should drop me off and that I should run home, rather than me do yet another variation on local circuits. That was great - but there's no easy way to abandon it early if things don't go to plan ...
Anyway, it turned out to be a good day for running. It was around 16 degrees with a moderate breeze that, for a change, looked like it would be behind me most of the way. So, my wife dropped me off in Woodbridge and, after a few minutes warm up, I set off.
Suffolk is pretty flat, but I knew that the start of the run involved a few hills (Strava tells me 109m climb in total) so, music on, I hit the first one straight away. Hmmm ... that seems pretty good. And what goes up, must come down so it wasn't long before I got to coast downhill again. So now it's a couple of km in and things are ticking along nicely. Time for the next hill, and this one is just a little bit steeper but still quite comfortable.
One of the strange things about running this route is that it's very familiar territory, taking me past BT's labs at Adastral Park where I worked for more than 20 years, but it's also completely fresh from a running point of view. As many of you will have experienced, you get such a different view running than from the window of a car. I did mean to snap a photo of the BT site looking back once I'd past it but realised that, while it looms large on the horizon in a car, the hedges by the path I was running actually block it out quite effectively. Oh well, it'll still be there another day ...
With the first 5k done I knew there was just one more hill to come at Brightwell. Short and sharp down and then back up again. It was a great feeling getting to the top of that and knowing that it was pretty much flat all the way home!
The most challenging part of the next 5k was keeping an eye out for traffic. Being Sunday, it wasn't that busy but, as I said, I know the road very well from driving and was aware just how fast people could come sweeping round some of the bends. Fortunately, with the wind at my back, I was making good time and I'd settled nicely into a good pace, and the drivers I did encounter were considerate and mostly gave me a wide berth. Travelling the road at a rather different pace I noticed a number of paths and side-roads that I'd never really seen when driving. I did consider that they might be good future running trails, but that will have to wait for another day.
I hit 10k just after the hour mark (Strava tells me it was a PR -- which it is as far as Strava knows), so I thought I'd better slow down for a moment for a drink and a jelly baby or two. It wasn't hot so I didn't feel the need to take too much on board. I don't know about other people but I find running and drinking (from a bottle) and trying to keep an eye on where I'm going to be a bit of a coordination challenge. But maybe that's a male deficiency in multi-tasking ability ...
Anyway, suitably rehydrated (and jelly-babied) I thought I'd take the final 6k just a little steadier. I was getting close to roads that I'd run many times before and that certainly gave me confidence that the full 16k would be fine. There was still one more slightly meandering back road (with the delightful name of "Innocence Lane") holding the potential for traffic surprises before I got to run on footpaths again once I hit the Kirton road.
I was now coming into the last stage of the run. First past Trimley St Martin school, where my daughter used to teach, then the farm shop and over the A14 footbridge. That was a surprising little shock to the system after running 13k -- it was a bit steeper than I expected but, of course, over very quickly. So I'd now run further than ever before but I was now into home ground and roads that I've pounded since the days of C25k.
To remind myself of my first 10 miles I thought I'd snap a picture of the "twin sisters", the churches of Trimley St Martin and Trimley St Mary that stand at the border between the villages and share the same churchyard.
I'm now just a few minutes from the end of the run and my music track shifts down in tempo. That's not right! I really don't want to slow down at this point so I skip back a track and push on. The track finishes and goes to chilled mode again but this time I just ignore it and manage the last km in dead on 6:00. And, just so I don't cheat on the 10 miles, I let myself ease off for another 100 metres.
Ten miles. I just ran ten miles. And I feel I could probably do more. How on Earth did that happen?
HUHM 10 Miles - Woohoo! 😁
Race Report - HUHM V5K
10 Mile Race Report
