Training Log Archive: AC

Event: London City Race
 

Have been looking forward to the London City Race for quite a while. It has always been a great event - excellent maps, interesting terrains in the middle of London, tricky courses. And amazingly enough, no rain at any of the events so far (although now I have put the knocker on the event and it will piddle down next year for sure). This year's event didn't disappoint, although the area - Canary Wharf - was not as tricky as other races in previous years. There were a few traps, all but one of which I figured out in advance, but also quite a bit of dead running. I think they could have made better use of the area for our course at least.

Ran very hard the whole way and felt strong and fast. I made a 40 sec route choice error to #5 - I thought I was very clever finding a way through the maze of impassable walls to the east and didn't even see the much faster route to the west until I saw others' routes on Routegadget! Then I binned a minute on #18 when I was too busy trying to figure out which side of an impassable wall #19 was on and missed the turnoff down a small street, so had to check myself and double back when I realised what had happened. Quite annoying esp as #19 was very straightforward and not tricky at all. So, wound up 13th (out of 130+) and if I had not lost the 1.40 would have been 6th with a close look at 4th/5th. The top few are just too fast across the ground though and are still a good 1-2 minutes in front.

Lovely day and really enjoyed it, Can't wait until next year. They have teamed up with Porto, Edinburgh and Barcelona to create a European City O Tour next year - looks like a good challenge to me!

Busy day of meetings so took an early run after the first decent night's sleep in ages. Cool grey morning, but nice to run in the early morning light. Run okay, nothing special. Right leg seems about to seize up - knee, hip and ankle all complaining. Must be getting old.