Back to the Hills

On Tuesday I headed back down to the club for a second go in a kayak. The previous excursion had left me on the following day with aches in both shoulders and arms. Stretching and a jog more or less cleared it up but I don't suppose that I can expect little else after such a long lay off. It was certain that I'm back to the beginning as far as distance is concerned because two miles was as far as I could manage. On this occasion though it went a little better as I tagged onto the half dozen club members that make up the Tuesday morning group. Bringing up at the rear I soon found that I couldn't keep up even with their slow pace and gradually dropped behind. Gradually more muscles began to tire and protest at the assault by tightening up until I deemed that I'd had enough. Still, I made it up to a mile and then detached myself to return back to the clubhouse. The day after the aches and pains weren't quite so prominent as the previous week, so there may have been some minuscule improvement.

On Thursday I decided that a return to the hills was in order so I made my way over to the Richmond ParkRun course for the first time in a couple of weeks. For various reasons I'd like to do a fast time on this course. The ParkRun organisation provides a wealth of data on personal performances, not least of which is age category grading in which it appears I have made the ninth fastest run on the Richmond course for my age group. I think I can do better. The fastest time is 21:36 set some eight years ago and although that sort of performance is probably out of the question I'm pretty sure that injuries permitting, I can get a lot closer to it. But, as they say, if you want to run fast, you've got to run fast, and that includes on the hilly bit. In fact at the moment, that last mile accounts for more than a minute on the even pace time of the other two previous miles.

Looked at objectively the hills at Richmond are not really very impressive as hills go. Way back when, this part of the landscape formed only a part of the outer path around the park which I managed on a regular basis in a run of a bit over six and a half miles. Back then, long before the happy-clappy crowd that organises the park's facilities and named it the Tamsin Trail',  I didn't really recall regarding them as 'hills', more a bit of an undulation at the end of the run. However, the hills now seem to have taken on more formidable proportions in my mind's eye as they do regularly take the legs out from under me when at full chat.

Jogging out of the Sheen car park area a large oak tree marks the two mile point of the ParkRun course, and the start of the first incline, or 'hill' as I like to call it. The incline, slope, hill, upward trend, (call it what you will) carries on for about a quarter mile which exercises the legs and then breaks left, then again right, up a firmer incline to the brow of the rise in another quarter mile. By which time the legs are thoroughly depleted to the point of exhaustion. This shouldn't really be happening.

First 'Undulation' at Two Mile Tree.

From the brow there is a shorter, sharper descent into Dingley Dell, my name for the hollow that has a bridge over a stream at its lowest point which is the start of the shorter, sharper slope that carries on for about a quarter mile. Here at at the top is where the start of the ParkRun is located and just after breasting the rise is another down slope to the three mile mark. At this point the path resumes it upward trend for the last 0.1 part of a mile in a sharp, left curving, stone and gravel, ankle-turning path to the finish.  All in all it's not an easy course to run and I'm unlikely ever to make a 5k PB on it, but it's a whole lot more interesting than a wide flat course such as Bushy.