Trails and The Baddow 10

Well I seem to have a had a few hits on the first entry of my new blog (into double figures anyway) so I'll continue...

At the end of my last blog I had completed the Halstead Marathon at the expense of an injury to my left hamstring. Those of you with long memories that read my very early MDS blog entries will remember I ended up having to take quite a long break from running due to not listening to my body and running on an injury. On Monday I couldn't walk without some pain. Tuesday was a little better and by Wednesday it was nothing more than a slight discomfort. As a result Wednesday saw me back out on the local trails for a very gentle run, always ready to stop if the hamstring started putting in a complaint, even an informal one. It didn't and I completed the 6 mile loop I regularly run.

Thursday I thought I'd give it a rest (or possibly it was raining - anyway I didn't run that day) however Friday is usually a day for a longer run from work to home and as it was a particularly nice day I was very keen on having a slightly extended trot round the Essex countryside. It's actually only 2.2 miles from work back to my house, however I usually seem to cover at least 8 miles and no, its not always because I get lost - however...

As I've expanded my running horizons I've found more and more decent footpaths to run and can put together a fairly decent trail run without having to spend too much time leaping into hedges dodging cars driven by clairvoyants. I assume the drivers are clairvoyant anyway, its hard to see how else they can be confident there is nothing round the corner as they barrel into blind bends at 90 miles an hour. Anyway I have quite an acceptable PB for leaping into hedges and generally try not to put myself into situations where I may have to try and break it. Anyway back to the point, I decided to run down a footpath I'd taken once before to link up with St. Peters Way and follow that for a while.

As I said I'd only run the first part once before and that time I had a map - this time I was relying on my memory. I work on a site with a very distinctive radio mast, it's quite a handy navigation aid for those occasions I find myself geographically embarrassed. On this occasion it was meant to be behind me so when I looked up and saw it just before the horizon in front of me I retraced my steps, took the other left and continued...

...onto St. Peter's Way. Sorry if you were expecting a long and amusing tale of navigational mishap but I found SPW exactly where I expected - yes, I was surprised too. I even followed it through West Hanningfield where there are absolutely no markers, amazingly I remembered it from the SPW Ultra, even though that went the other way to this run. Everything was going well, the sun was out, the trails were reasonably dry but with a little bit of spring in them and whilst as far as SPW is concerned the only way is Essex, the rolling fields of the countryside couldn't have been further from the stereotypical image of the county.

Everything went well until was running down someone's drive. Said drive did have signs along it assuring me I was still on SPW - until I went through the gate at the end of it. I followed the obvious path into a field of cows. I'm not sure I've ever seen cows break into a full blooded sprint before but for whatever reason they really didn't want to be anywhere near me. To be fair I had been running for a couple of hours and was a bit sweaty but I didn't think I smelt bad enough to scare a bovine quadruped. Anyway I quickly realised I had upset someone's dairy herd for no good reason as my compass told me I was going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Yes, I carry a compass and still get lost. Fortunately a man on a ride-on mower pointed me the in the right direction and I was able to continue until I reached the point at which I left SPW and took another trail back towards Chelmsford. I got home with no further major incident other than a large rip in my top caused by not quite ducking low enough under a fallen tree across the trail.

Saturday saw me at Parkrun again where I ran 5km in exactly 21 minutes according to my official time. Not bad and quite enough running for now as I was planning on taking on the Baddow 10 on Sunday.

The Baddow 10 is an event I've run on a number of occasions. It's quite a nice rural road race and it starts less than 10 minutes walk from my house, so as it was a glorious Sunny day Sharon and I took the short work to pick up an entry on the day. The Baddow 10 is a very relaxed event, entries close 15 minutes before the start, which isn't until 11 'o' clock, and as the start and finish are in the same place, the baggage drop doesn't really close at all. We got our numbers and said hello to Ian, who appears to be going to enter every single race within a 100 mile radius of Chelmsford in 2014. I lined up far too close to the front and, at just after eleven, we were off. There is no course I know better than that of the Baddow 10. Even though it's not the race I've run most often I've run all the roads on the course many, many times and so navigation wasn't going to be an issue. Its also incredibly well marshalled so none of the many potential short cuts were really an option either.

I was running at a fair pace and, most pleasingly, my hamstring was enjoying the sunshine and not complaining even a little bit. I wasn't sure how long I could keep running with a heat rate of between 170 and 180 but this was a good race on which to find out. Except it wasn't as the answer appears to be 'for more than 10 miles'. Despite the heat, which seemed to take its toll on some of the runners, I managed a new PB for 10 miles, beating my 2006 time on the same course by 17 seconds to record 1 hour, 11 minutes and 21 seconds. Of course having running across the Sahara recently may have given me a slightly different perspective as to what constitutes 'hot'...

Once again I had the privilege to be part of a well organised an well run event. I'm sure one day I'll be sitting in front of this keyboard berating someone's organisation but it isn't today. As I said before it's a very friendly event and well organised.

So what next? Well I'm planning on entering the Saffron Trail, a 70 mile, overnight epic from Southend to Saffron Walden. This is not something to be undertaken lightly, in fact I'm taking it so seriously I intend to go out his weekend to recce some of the route and try and get getting lost over with in the daylight. I'll let you know how that works out...