The Bournemouth Bay Run
This is an annual 10k race held in my hometown of Bournemouth in the UK, by the BHF (British Heart Foundation). It’s a mixture of athletes running competitively with club vests, Garmin watches and racing flats, and those who are running running to raise money for charity and just happy to complete the distance. It’s all relative though; I saw a couple of friends there, both of whom were over the moon to have gotten in under the hour mark – and rightly so as they’d both trained hard for it. They were impressed with my time, which I shrugged off, and I in turn was impressed with the times of those who had come in ahead of me…
The Bournemouth Bay Run 2014 (photo from the Bournemouth Echo)
The Course
The start line is at Bournemouth pier with the first 4.5k then taking you along the nice flat promenade, with golden sand and the English Channel sparkling away to your right. You then run up a zigzag slope (killer!) for about 1 minute before turning around and running back along the overcliff to Boscombe pier. The great thing about this race is that the last 2-3k are along a flat promenade with the finish line clearly in sight – a good opportunity to open up the legs and sprint to the end!
View from the start line
Psychologically, this race throws me a bit. In my head I’m thinking, “ok, this is just a nice easy ‘out-and-back’ flat route”! In reality, although it’s flat enough for the first 4.5k, there is the zigzag killer followed by a long incline before you drop down on the the promenade again. Tougher than I expected (even though this was my 5th time doing this race!)
The dreaded Zigzag!
Time
I stopped too early. There was a blue line 20 metres before the actual finish and with my head down sprinting, I stopped here! Fortunately, the crowd all shouted at me that I’d stopped too early and I jogged across the actual finish line in dead on 40 mins. 8 secs off a PB. It was lovely weather, with a slight wind against us for the first 5k but the sun on our back for the return.
Full results here
Next Training
Been feeling under the weather the last couple of days so I’m going to take a few days (hopefully just that!) off from running…
