David Currie

This evening’s RR10 took place at Manor Farm Country Park. My legs felt tired from the off and, after a slow start, things never really got going. It may have been my imagination but there did seem to be rather a lot of uphil in the race. Despite looking at the map beforehand, I was also slightly thrown by looping north back in to the open toward the end rather than continuing own southwards in the woods. After some encouragement from Andy Morgan-Lee I put on a spurt in the last mile but only succeeded in overtaking two other Southampton runners, dying again before I could overtake the New Forest runner in the closing straight. I finished 24th which, whilst a slight improvement on last time, still leaves a lot of room for improvement.

(more…)

Jon made possibly his second appearance of the year to lead us on tonight’s run from Beaulieu Road. It was a nice new loop with a mixture of open and woodland. We were once again treated to bright sunshine although there was no breeze this evening which made things a little unpleasant. I’m afraid I wimped out and didn’t do the extra loop down to the south-east at the end. With touch rugby at lunchtime I thought I should be saving myself for tomorrow’s RR10.

(more…)

I made it out to Beaulieu Road again this evening and we had another sunny run, this time doing a anti-clockwise loop out towards Deerleap. I was grateful for the opportunity to vote for the short route on a couple of occasions as I was aching in all sorts of strange places having played touch rugby at lunchtime. (I’m glad to say that we won the rugby but I wouldn’t claim much of the credit.)

(more…)

Having given myself last Tuesday off running (donated blood in the morning and then child minding would have meant missing the pub) it was good to be out at Beaulieu Road tonight. We had a nice sensibly paced  run (which had nothing to do with Neil not arriving in time I’m sure) along a pleasant route out to the trig point near Bolton’s Bench. Jon Forster even made it out for possibly the first time this year!

(more…)

Not a great deal to say about last night’s RR10. My legs were still tired from the half marathon at the weekend and I still felt a bit drained from giving blood the previous day. On top of which the course was pretty dull, winding around the gravel tracks in the Inclosure for most of the race. I wasn’t therefore particularly surprised to be handed a ticket with the number 28 on at the finish.

(more…)

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.

(more…)