Preparing for Greensands...

Best of the Carshalton area hills over 20 miles

With the Greensands Marathon in mind I've been working as many hills as possible into my runs.  Whilst the Carshalton area is far from mountainous there's a few good hills around.  On Thursday I took advantage of all the roads which go up onto Banstead road for an 8 mile run with 800ft of height gain and loss, and today I did a bit of a 'best of local hills' for my long run.  Banstead road, Oaks Park, Chipstead road, Banstead Woods and the hills down into Coulsdon all got run;  20 miles with a relentless selection of hills and over 2,000 ft of height gain across the route. Good training, however the only problem is Greeensands has 5,200 ft ( a vertical mile!) to contend with so there needs to be a bit more hill training needed before the day!

Nonsuch Park Run

Went along to the inaugural running of the Nonsuch Park Run this morning.  There was a good turn up of 160+ runners, many of whom took advantage of the flat course to post some fast sub-18 minute times (it was won in 16:23).  I completed the course in a slightly more sedate 19:35 but considering it was the day after a 15 mile (1,500 ft height gain) run through the hills around Coulsdon I was surprised to sub 20.  It's a good course, which makes full use of the park with a mix of grass, trail and tarmac and as the nearest to home I may have to go along again at some point- maybe try and get my time nearer to 19 minutes. 

There's now 5 Park Runs in the area- at some point (maybe next year) I want to have a go at running them all and in between in one day...

Banstead Woods Park Run

Everyone says that Banstead Woods is one of the best Park Runs out there, so I thought I'd check out.  They're right as well it's a good one, there's a few hills, some mud and a great atmosphere with 100+ runners congregating in the woods of a Saturday morning.  With the Greensands Marathon in mind I ran an undulating 5 or so miles there and back to add an extra 10 miles on to the mornings run, but still managed an 'OK' time of 20:29 and 13th place for the park run- despite my warm up being almost twice as long as the race!

Next week they're running an inaugural park run at Nonsuch Park, so as long as I have time to go for along run at another point in the week I might go and check it out.

1,000 miles

Just a short update to say this week I passed the mile stone of 1,000 miles for the year so far and entered the Greensands Marathon.