Hi everyone,

Another great week of running! Keep up the good work! This week we return to some of our classic routes that offer lots of options in terms of mileage. Monday is Hyde Park, Wednesday is The Wall and Friday is the The Heath.  

Good Luck Racers

Good luck to Sonia, Alyse, Peg and Stefhanie who are running the Richmond Kew Gardens 10K on Sunday! We hope you have a fantastic day!

Aches and Pains

If you’re getting back into running and starting to notice a few aches and pains, please try to see an expert. Often with proper stretching or strengthening exercises you can address something that is bothering you and prevent an injury. You also may consider a sports massage, which can be an excellent way to deal with tight muscles. We have recommendations of who to see under the “Our Experts” tab on the website.

Why Should Long Runs Be Slower?

Thanks to Lisa Noel for this great Runner’s World article that gives a clear, concise summary of the science behind training with a slower, long run.  We’ll return to this concept a few times throughout the year.  When you tackle a new distance, your mile pace should be 45 – 90 seconds slower than your race pace.   “When we overload the body in gradual, incremental increases, it responds positively by becoming stronger.  If we overload the body too rapidly or too heavily too soon, it doesn’t have time to adapt and we risk poor performance, injury, illness and/or mental burnout.”  Right now during the early fall, we’re not worrying too much about race pace and training pace.  The most important thing is to run, build up your fitness, get to know the people in the group and have fun!  In general, you should be running at a pace that enables you to comfortably chat and have a conversation.  Next week we’ll be sharing more information about the pace groups.  The pace groups will play an important role in our training schedule when we start to gradually tick up the mileage and when we’ll be doing our long slower runs.

Barclays Sidewalk

When we meet in front of Barclays in the morning, try to gather in the plaza and not the sidewalk.  We’re such a large group and we want to be good citizens and not block the sidewalk for people walking by.

Keep running,

Jane

ROUTES

Monday 22 September – Hyde Park – always versatile! (3-8 miles)

Click here for all of the Hyde Park interactive route maps

Start:  Everybody starts the same way… head west on Circus Road, turn left on Grove End Road and follow south as it becomes Lisson Grove.  Cross over Marylebone Road and continue on Seymour Place until the end.  Turn right and cross over Edgware Road and then take the first left on Stanhope Place to enter Hyde Park at the intersection with Stanhope Place. Cross into the Park—you’ll see a silver orb just inside the Park.  After entering the Park, turn right and run towards Speaker’s Corner.

3 Milers:  Continue south through Hyde Park, past the Serpentine and at the Carriage drive, make a left and head back toward Hyde Park Corner.  Take the Hyde Park Corner tube home.

5 Milers:  At Hyde Park Corner continue back up/north on the carriage drive.  Exit the park at the Animals in War memorial and follow Upper Brook Street.  Turn left on Park Street which becomes Gloucester Place and then Park Road back to St. John’s Wood. 

6 Milers: upon entering the park, turn right at the silver sphere and run until you meet N Carriage Road where you turn left.  Run down to the Serpentine, crossing over the bridge then left to run along the Serpentine. At the end of the Serpentine, turn left again and make your way to the eastern edge of the park before exiting at the Upper Brook St/Animals in War exit.  Continue along Upper Brook Street to Park Street, turn left, take it to Park Road and into SJW.

 

8 Milers: follow the 6 mile run but do not turn left at No Carriage Rd, instead cross over [this is tricky, be careful of the traffic] and follow until you reach the large broad walk where you turn left.  Run past Kensington Palace (on your right) and take a left to run along the southern edge of the park towards Hyde Park Corner, then turn left on the eastern edge and exit at Upper Brook St/Animals in War exit as above.  Take Upper Brook Street to Park Street [left] to Park Road and home to SJW.

Wednesday 24 September – The Wall (3 to 6 miles)

We head down towards Regents Park, then enter the canal at the Charlbert entrance and run east [left] cutting through Camden Lock Market until we run out of canal path at Islington.  Since the canal is blocked here, we call it “The Wall.”  At The Wall, we turn around and head back to St. John’s Wood.  This is a great route to do a tempo run because there are no traffic lights.  But please be careful and aware of the bikes on the path.

If you run all the way to The Wall and back it is 6 miles.  But it is very easy to run half the distance if you want and turn around and head home.  As a marker, if you run to the Camden market (where we have to exit the canal path and run past the food stalls for a minute) and return home it is a 3 mile round trip.

 

Friday 26 September – The Heath (4-8 miles)

We run up the hill on Fridays–it’s tradition! It is hard, but you’ll feel great when you are finished. 

If you are not up for a hill run yet, no problem, just let us know.  Every week there are a group of women who prefer to do a flat run.  We can help make sure that you find each other.

4 miles:  A great way to ease into running the hill.   Run up to the Hampstead tube station and back. If you have trouble running up, think about how easy it will be running down!

5 miles: The Betsy Route

6-7 miles:  The partial Heath route

8 miles:  The full Heath route

Click here for maps of all of the Heath routes.

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