FRIDAY 2nd MAY - 5.30pm
Distance: 10.98k.
Time: 1 hour, 12 minutes
Average pace: 6 min 35 secs per km
Route: Kings Cross, Farringdon, Blackfriars, Elephant & Castle, Kennington, Brixton
Music: Watch The Throne - Jay-Z & Kanye West; Magna Carta Holy Grail - Jay-Z
This is the run that inspired me to start this blog, among other things. As I said in previous posts, I do wish I had started blogging from that first awful running experience, but managing to do 10k is a good enough milestone to start keeping a log of my progress.
This evening's run was fairly straight forward - I wanted to complete a 10k before doing We Own The Night, just to make sure I wasn't going to die in the middle of Victoria Park or some such. I'd already managed 8.6k so in actuality there were probably no real concerns, but you never know.
I started running from work in Kings Cross down to London Bridge not too long ago, which works out (according to MapMyRun) about 6k on average, and on a whim I decided it was probbaly the most sensible way to get close to 10k, by extending that run and try to get to around 9k or 9.5k. I figured out a fairly straighforward route (lots of boring straight lines, actually) and figured if I did it now then I could get it out of the way so I could enjoy the rest of the Bank Holiday. Excellent motivation as means I can do more sitting around in between birthday lunches, getting my haircut and whatnot.
Anyhoo, it wasn't the easiest run, especially around the 2-3k mark. I drank one too many glasses of wine last night and still felt a bit stodgy from an ilicit trip to McDonalds, so was feeling a bit 'heavy'. I don't think I enjoyed much of it, honestly, but as ever told myself if I could get to Elephant and Castle I could always jump on my bus early (nooooo), and then applied the same mentality to Kennington, and halfway down Brixton and so on and so on. The last 2k, ish, was far and away the most enjoyable, and seeing my final destination from a distance meant I pretty much stuck it out to the end. PHEW.
The only slightly confusing moment was at Elephant & Castle roundabout, also known as the seventh layer of hell. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, it's just a big THING in the middle of South-ish London that you can't see beyond and all roads appear to lead to the same hideous place. I probably could have managed 10k running around in circles there, had I not checked my Google maps. Ugh.
Today's run was helped along by my inner gangster, and Jay Z. I always find hip hop/rap music quite relaxing when running - there's the exact right amount of low and high tempo, rarrr-ness (a technical term), and songs to make me smile a bit to keep me buzzing along.
To conclude: 10k DONE. Woohooooo. I plan to do at least one more run over the long weekend, so watch this space.
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