David Currie

Two weeks ago I managed to completely forget that it was an RR10 – this time I remembered the race but forgot my shoes! Thankfully, I was wearing an old pair of trainers to drive there and, other than a slight lack of grip, I wasn’t particularly disadvantaged.

The venue was a delightfully sunny Wilverley Plain. Apparently, the course was the same as last year, but it was new to me. I quite enjoyed it, with a good selection of undulations followed by a nice flat finish. I fell in behind a couple of Southampton runners for the first half of the course, and then edged ahead of them on a downhill. I was still ahead when we reached the Plain, but just didn’t have any kick at the end, so they both overtook me on the run in.

I was, however, happy not to feel too badly the effects of either the previous evening’s run or the half of my dinner that I had eaten before going out! I was even happier to discover that I’d made it into the top 20.

The weather was fantastic for running on Tuesday night: bright sunshine filtering through the trees and a nice breeze to keep the midges away whilst we waited to start. We headed down to the Repitiliary this week and, yet again, I failed to see any reptiles (the closest we got was a snake skin). Heading back north we veered a bit close to the road but this did have the advantage that we didn’t hit the gravel track until we were fairly near to home. This will have been my last run from the Canadian War Memorial as it’s Emma’s birthday next Tuesday.

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Yesterday’s run from Canadian War Memorial largely stayed in the Inclosures which resulted in a bit more track running than usual. This in turn meant that we ended up crossing over ourselves a couple of times. I heard my first cuckoo of the year whilst we were out running; the less welcome wildlife were the midges waiting for us back at the car park. Driving home I experienced another truly English experience: Lyndhurst high street appeared to be closed due to Morris Dancing!

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