The Spitfire 10K RAF Museum Colindale, London: The 75th Commemoration of the The Battle of Britain
But that aside, this was to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and, as I am a supporter of our armed forces past, present and future, I had to run it for the RAF Benevolent Fund.
- Toilets. There were only the cafe toilets for a field of 600 runners. Queues were long.
- Delays. The 9 o’clock start was delayed as the marshalls were not out on the course. Some of us had already completed our warmup when were told there would be a 15 minute delay minumum.
- Warmup. Despite the volume of his warmup, the guy who ran it couldn’t even warm me up enough to write this blog post let alone run a 10K.
- GPS. Whilst it was super cool to be under the Lancaster bomber for the speeches and warmup, we were in a hanger, a metal hanger and a lot of us had zero GPS signal. The Scramble! Chocks away! Start meant that some of us, and it was quite a few walked out and had to wait for signal before we started. I ended up starting pretty much last, letting the entire field go before my Nike+ kicked in.
- Route. Was awful. I am sorry, I want it to be great but it wasn’t. The museum isn’t actually that big, so the route was out of the museum then 8K out on the streets, none of which were closed and some were quite dangerous dual carriageways.
- Route 2. The marshalls hadn’t all done their job well. Some did, clearly, but several of the kilometer markers (2 close by each other, one for each lap) were absolutely nowhere near the actual measurements. If I didn’t have my watch I would have been screwed.
- Route 3. The marshalls. Some of them were just not marshalls. They were on their phones or talking rather than cheering us on, pointing out the route etc.
- No outdoor loos on the route.
- One water table, at the entrance to the museum. I would have probably had one a little later.
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| Chocks Away |
But all that aside, how did I do?
This was not a race for a PB, and I would have been 3 minutes away from that if the course had measured the 10K and not been 60M short. There was a motorway bridge to cross twice, and a few nasty dips that you needed to navigate. I also had to pick up the speed at the beginning as I started last and ran a 5 minute first kilometer to push myself through the crowd, not that it really matterd, as once you left the museum and were on the pavement there was a lot of bunching.
But, I tell you what, after a brisk 10K yesterday too I am happy my time and my run.
For all my umming and ahhing about this race, and all my reservations about running a Nice Work race, the bling is amazing. It is bespoke, large, unique and I love it.
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| Reeeeeeeeeowwwwww! Duggaduggadugga! Bandits at 11 o’clock. On your tail, ginger! |
In Summary
Runners Knees 