I would first like to note that this blog post was written under duress. If this post was not written before J got back home from taking the dogs out for a walk after our run I was informed there would be dire consequences. Making me terribly threatened. She was unable to give me details on what these dire consequences would be. Making this a terrible threat. So I had a shower, did the washing and watched the birds in the garden before taking some photos and getting my screenshots sorted ready to waffle.
Running is taking me many new places at the moment, this time it was Herrington Country Park, right next to the Penshaw Monument, which I have seen in the distance from the A1 but never actually been to. I still can’t say I’ve been to it, and I still have no idea why it’s there, but I have at least been ignorant from a much closer distance. For some reason I deem this important.
We had opted for the 5km distance, but it was evident as we went round that either both our GPS watches were very out at the same time, or whoever set the km markers didn’t have one…the markers were increasingly early, and we weren’t sure whether this meant the last km stretch would be the world’s longest (the 4km mark was actually at 3.4km), or the run wouldn’t actually be 5km long. It turned out to be a bit of both – it wasn’t quite 5km when we crossed the finish line, but it wasn’t out by 0.6km either!
Very little of the course was actually flat, but the slopes were at least all gentle even if some of them were long. A step up from the flats of the riverside towpaths, but not a huge one. Pulling all the stops out, J ran the whole thing without a walking break – making this the furthest without a break she’s run (unless she’s been lying to me), in the very respectable time of 35m 52s! Hurray! To make it even better, we were met at the end by a nice lady with an enormous tub of sweets – jelly babies are rapidly becoming my favourite run snack, and J was able to swindle some Swizzels lollies. We also got a nice Resolution Run 5km medal, and we’d recieved Stroke Association technicalrunning vests as part of our race packs.
This was a moderately small race, the race numbers were different colours depending on the number of laps you were doing – blues were 5km, and yellows were 10km and doing 2 laps – I have no idea what colour the 15km bib was or if anyone there was doing the three laps, but I didn’t see them! We all started at the same time, and I think there were between 60 and 100 runners total.
The route was well marked, for direction even if the distances were a little out, so there was no risk of getting lost, and the paths were good quality – this is something I’ve paid more attention to since the No Ego Torch Run of mud-gripping doom. I enjoyed the setting – I bet it’s fab, though probably packed, in the summer sunshine, and I don’t think I’ve seen so many good-looking dogs (no, that’s not an innuendo!) in one place in a long time! Who needs to go to Crufts?! Pick a bench in a park in the North-East and see what strolls past! So many pretty pedigrees and mutts. J made friends with a chocolate lab pup she couldn’t resist going to see before and after the run!
Overall, a nice trip out for a Sunday morning! Now, combining this with yesterday, I’m going to spend the afternoon doing stretches and trying out my new foam roller!
You can download the GPX data for this course from my Dropbox account by following the link below:
Blue Runnings 
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