This weekend was always going to be fun. It is the 3rd anniversary of my racing life as I did, surprisingly I know, start my racing at the 2012 BUPA London 10K and have been hooked ever since. So Happy Running Birthday to me.

As I said in the last post, I have a lot to thank the BUPA London 10K organisers for. If the race hadn’t been so well organised, marshalled, supported, if the bling hadn’t been superb and the t-shirt cool I may not have continued and today’s BUPA London 10K, my 4th, would not have been my 71st race.

The bank holiday weekend started, as most do, with a Saturday. I decided not to Park Run in Hampstead Heath as it is a bit hilly and I was running the next two days. I did run it the previous week and the shoes were a bit of a success, so they had been promoted to being the race shoe this weekend.

This gave me a day of rest before the BUPA Westminster Mile. Now I have never run a mile before, not by itself anyway so I had no idea what to do. I was in the sub 7.30 group that went off at 9:45am and thought I would be ok. My PB for the mile up until this point was 7:32 so I was looking forward to beating that somewhat.

Rather than training down to Green Park, where the tents were set up for the weekend, and prior to the run around St James Park, I ran it from home. Well, I ran-jogged-walked the 4 miles which I thought was great warm up.

I met up with @AdamPrav and saw @Bozenka_m there too and just ran around with the others. It was a 3/4 lap of the outer edge of the park, very scenic and I got my photo taken in front of Buckingham Palace. I thought I was on for a 1K PB but I was a minute off that, so the Mile was my only target. I could have done it, however…

Hm, see the obvious bluebottle doing the backstroke across my bowl of gazpacho? Yes, a mile is actually 1.609344 kilometres. I barely ran 1.55. Poor show there, especially as on for the Mile PB. Still, I could have run it faster, a lot faster, and the damned tree pollen from the park set my throat on fire. I did get the bling which for all intents and purposes is the 2014 10K medal in a different colour. It does have Olympic legend and former world record holder at the distance Steve Cram, who started us off, on the back.

The BUPA London 10k was the next day (Monday) and I felt pretty bad. I had had two nights of bad sleep due to noisy neighbour TV, an infernal dog barking the whole damned night both nights and one eye on the clock. Add to that slight leg ache from the exertions of the day before (4 miles there, mile race, four miles back) and thought it was going to be a disaster.

Due to roadworks the route had been changed too. Rather than the ever familiar run to Admiralty Arch, down to Embankment, along to Blackfriars underpass, up to St Pauls and down Cornhill to Leadenhall Market before Philpot or Mincing Lane back to the Embankment, we ran along The Strand, Fleet Street, around Aldwych too, a much flatter route. A PB Should have been on the cards.

It is true, the course was much flatter and should have been a PB, if it wasn’t 10.33 KM and not the expected 10K. @FrankieSaysRun measured it at 10.37KM. Still, as my Nike+ measured the entire distance I ran, by the time I hit the 10K mark of the race I did actually have a PB by 47 seconds of 54:32. Happy with that.

And was happy of the bling too. Again different, as modelled by Frankie and I, with @Judie_judie taking the snap.

And I can probably thank Frankie for the PB to be honest. I was flagging at the end and met up with him with about 800m to go. We geed each other on and it definitely got me over the line.

A great weekend of running in London, although the Mile was measured short and therefore I couldn’t get a PB in it, and the 10K was measured long and I did. The bling is great, as always, and I am happy to have reached 71 races in 3 years, starting and ending with the BUPA London 10K.

Oh, the small matter of the shoes. Yes, I can hear you wondering, muttering amongst yourselves. In the end, after playing with different shoe and sock combinations to run home and Parkrun, the last Parkrun I ran in the On Cloudrunners.

They are incredibly light and quite flat. Anyway, after the Parkrun PB I wore them both days for both races and the runs to and from home. And what would have been a PB in both distances gives me the idea that these could well be my Berlin shoe. we shall have to see.