On Sunday I ran the above 10 mile road race, VRUK member Chris Caps was also there to run.

I have done this one a number of times over the last 20 years, it’s a popular event and this year it drew in nearly 800 runners. The course is mainly on quiet roads with a few stretches off road along The North Downs Way, there are two rather fierce hills that need to negotiated.

This year my training lost a lot of momentum owing to the recent heavy snow and its subsequent freezing. I did manage to get a few longer training runs of 10-11 miles in, but I missed the benefits of many of my weekly Parkruns, the heavy rainfall in December also making it difficult to cycle the 7+ miles to the event. An attempt to go on Saturday was thwarted, owing to large stretches of the cycle path I use being covered with frozen snow, about halfway I did a U-turn realizing I was not going to get there on time.

So on Sunday I hadn’t run for 10 days. The first 5 miles seemed to go OK, but after that I found some fatigue setting in, together with coldness in the upper body, and the sharp hill at around mile 8 wasn’t too welcome either!

I was originally hoping to finish in under 1:25:00, to improve on last year’s 1:25:08, but came in with a disappointing 1:33:42 – chip time. Chris who had finished in good time, ran some of the final 400 meters alongside me by way of support.

Chip times and positions:

                                          Chris Caps –    1:15:25.   231/772
                                          Keith Gilbert – 1:33:42.   592/772