Sunday Social at Wimpole Hall

Ruth and I kicked off our weekend with the Cambridge Park Run yesterday morning.  When I set off for my warm-up I felt a bit rubbish.  Perhaps it was the half bottle of wine I drank the previous night, maybe it was the two weeks of little running, perhaps it was the opposite and I was still fatigued from London marathon, or maybe it was just all in my head.  I decided to set off at a fairly conservative pace and to just position myself in about 20th place over the first 500m.

The first mile felt tough, and I was running behind runners I'd normally beat.  I felt as if I was running at my absolute max.  At the 2 mile point I considered pulling out, which is the first time I've ever thought about not finishing a race.  However, I convinced myself to continue, reasoning that I didn't need to set a fast time and so long as I maintained a reasonably hard level of running I could at least consider it to be a decent training run.  Then over the last mile several runners ahead of me seemed to fade.  I probably passed about 5 or 6 runners in the last mile.  I ended up finishing in 9th place out of 259 runners with a time of 18 minutes 20 seconds, my third fastest 5k time.  So, despite feeling rubbish, I actually put in a reasonable performance.  Ruth also managed a good race for her, finishing with a PB of 28 minutes 35 seconds.

My Saturday was followed by lots of heavy duty gardening.  Ruth has decided to alter the layout of our garden.  So I spent my day digging up brick lawn edging, cleaning off the bricks and stacking them ready to be re-used in some other gardening venture later on.  I had originally laid the lawn edging on Ruth's insistence on the grounds that it would help with having a fairly low maintenance garden.  For anyone with similar ideas, it's only low maintenance if you don't change your mind a few years down the road.  Otherwise it's quite high maintenance.

Yesterday evening I went to a gig at the Cambridge Junction with a couple of friends to see a few up and coming bands as picked by the NME.  There should have been four bands, but it seemed that one hadn't turned up.  We got to see The History Of Apple Pie (not bad, but a crap name for a band), Grouplove and Anna Calvi, who was the only artist I'd previously heard of and who I already quite like.  However, the stars of the night were Grouplove.  Definitely a band to watch out for.  Each band member had great stage presence, they have some top foot stomping tunes and gave the impression that they'd been around for years.  In the interval before the headlining act came on stage I got talking to the bass player at the bar, and I was amazed to discover that they'd all only been together for a year.  After the show I bought their debut 6 track EP, which I've listened to several times today and it doesn't disappoint.  I'm looking forward to the arrival of their debut album in September.  I might also get to see them at Glastonbury Festival in June.

It being a Sunday today there was a plan for a long group run.  Jamsheed had suggested doing a run at Wimpole hall, which is somewhere I've visited with Ruth, but I've never run around the estate.  I didn't think the grounds would be big enough for the planned 12 mile run, but I was more than happy to be guided around a new running route.



The Elite Team at Wimpole Hall

So at 8.30 this morning a group of 8 runners met in the car park outside the stately home.  In the picture above you have Andy, me, Andrea H (hiding behind me), Andrea G, Jo, Shelley and Dan.  Jamsheed was taking the picture.  We did manage a 12 mile circuit of the estate.  This was first made up of a 7 mile loop mostly around the perimeter of the grounds, which had us running up steep inclines, through woods, along side the lake, over bridges, past the folly on the hill and back to the front of the house.  I'll let the following pictures do the rest of the talking:

Through the woods

Down to the lake

Across the bridge and looking towards the folly on the hill

Jamsheed passing in front of the hall.

After our initial 7 mile tour of the estate we said our goodbyes to Andrea G, who was just getting over a knee injury and not wishing to push her luck.  The rest of us set of in search of more miles.  We headed down a vague track away from the hall, which brought us to a dead end by a busy road.  We turned around and headed back to the hall.  Somehow, on the way back we ran straight into a bog which we hadn't encountered on the way out.  Rather than go around the bog, Andrea H convinced us all to leap it.  Some of us got a slightly soggy foot in the process, but poor Jo misjudged the distance more than the rest of us and landed with one foot right in the bog.  Her momentum kept her body going forwards but the suction power of the mud kept her shoe firmly in place.  It took both Jamsheed and me to pull it loose.




Beware of the bog

 After a quick glance at the muddy running shoe that we'd managed to retrieve for her, Jo decided she'd rather run back to the car park in just her socks rather than put it back on.  As you can see from the picture above, the shoe that had managed to stay on her foot wasn't in a much better state.  When we got back to the cars our total mileage had crept up to 9.5 miles.  At this point we said goodbye to Jo and Andrea H.  The remaining five set off once again to get our total mileage up to 12 miles.

We headed away from the hall and off the estate and through the village of Arrington.  Once we'd gone far enough we simply turned around and retraced our steps, this time without any major incidents.  All in all it was a really enjoyable outing with my wonderful running friends.  I would have preferred not to have done the couple of there and back sections at the end.  The 7 mile loop was great, and I would have preferred to have found another 5 mile loop to add on at the end.  Maybe next time we can explore other options.