This long weekend over New Year I have been lucky enough to be staying in Bath for a few nights. This is also great because I’m considering going to Bath uni so I can get to know the city more, to give me a better idea of what it would be like. With lots of races approaching in January, there was no pause in running on Saturday, so I headed to parkrun. I had looked on the parkruns website to try and give me an idea of what the course will be like. After navigating my way to the course... and having to tackle one huge hill to get there, I had a quick jog to look at what I could see of the course. Soon enough we were off and the course was pretty muddy and windy! The start began with a steep downhill then a big flight of steep steps. The rest was overall flat but much more muddy and I am ashamed to say, as I was going around the corner, splash... that’s me slipped into a puddle. Luckily I wasn’t that soaked all over, just two very very soggy feet! It was nice to come in with a steady time, to mix the parkrun in with my session. I did really enjoy having a navigate around Bath getting to parkrun and also the area around where the parkrun was. This weekend has consisted of lots of walking around Bath and shopping. Bath is possibly the most beautiful place and I’m certainly falling in love with it more each day! Next week I will be doing a bit of a post about 2017 and going into 2018. And of course my blogs birthday, the 12th January will mark two years of Race With Grace!!!
Love G x
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It has been a few weeks since my last blog post and cross-country race, last weekend’s race I was particularly excited for, why?… because I was representing Kent at the Southern Inter counties for the first time. My usually Friday night before the race was the same as normal, with a big bowl of pesto pasta (I’ve converted from carbonara). I also came straight home from school on the Friday, which is always a nice treat when I have nothing after school. After a relaxed evening my alarm was set and I was all packed for my race. My alarm wasn’t crazy early which was nice as I was leaving at 9:40am which meant I didn’t go into school in the morning, which is always a bonus. We headed off to Oxford with a car full of layers and footwear ready for the elements that we were expected to be facing in Oxford. When we arrived, we had slightly less time than planned following some nightmare traffic getting into Oxford. I picked up my number and headed out to walk the course. The course consisted of two 3km laps which were actually relatively flat apart from one mound at the beginning of each lap, so I was quite happy about that. Before I knew it, I was already standing on the start line amongst a large number of u17s and u20s. The start was physical with people in 3 or 4 rows on the line, luckily I found myself only the second line back. There were a few initial tight corners which meant lots of people ended up fighting for positions. It was a relief for the initial km to be over and then suddenly the u17 and u20 split off on their separate paths and we were now just running with our own age groups. From then on, the field spread out a lot and I actually found myself mainly running with other Kent runners; four of us seemed pretty huddled together in the same part of the field. The ground throughout the course was so variable, parts were rock hard, frozen by the seriously low temperatures. However, others had really churned up by the time it came to our u20 race. Ideally, I think I should have gone for 12mm spikes and not 9mm as I was losing grip in a lot of places (I should have listen to dad with his advice to go for the 12mm). The final stretch was 600m around a field and my legs were giving up and I really lacked some speed at the end and was over taken in the last 200m. This is definitely an area which I need to improve on before the new year when I have lots of important races coming up. I think I finished in the middle of the field and was the 6th Kent scorer which I was happy about. The official results have all gone a bit wrong for the organisers but hopefully somehow, I’ll be able to see how I did officially. I hope everyone who was racing this weekend had good races and enjoyed this rather overdue blog post, but I’m sure you can imagine in my last year of school, work is pretty heavy at the moment. I am now on my Christmas holidays so there should certainly be more going on, on my blog and social media!!
Love G x |
HelloI'm Grace, a 18 year old runner, and fitness fanatic. Join me on my crazy journey through life, squeezing in an adventure in every second of spare time I have. Archives
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