Assembly League 1: Beckenham detours and mars bars

The tradition of complete failure to generate any mass what so ever for the 'en masse' travel to the venue was nearly upheld. No-one at City Thameslink and I thought I was going to be Billy No-Mates for the trip to Beckenham, but as the train pulled out of Blackfriars Chris was suddenly in on my train and stitting opposite me.

At Ravensbourn station we bumped into one of the Rocket Lockett elite and scratched our heads at the completely blocked road that is supposed to be part of the course, see below.

The course was adjusted, to go around the blockage and finish outside the park (as it might have closed at 7:15) but it looked pretty open to me when I finished. My garmin made it 2.95 miles or 4.81 km, but uploaded to mapmyrun they make it a shade over 3 miles. You can see the kink in the route to avoid the road works outside the station.



Chris was planning to leave a mark on his first assembly league appearance and it was to come in the bizzare form of downing a mars bar in record time just as we left the changing room for the start line. My more conventional Oatabix at 3pm and one gel for Chris' mars bar worked treat.

At the start Steve was grinning at me in a kind of "see if you can catch me in the last 400m way", but I stuck to my game plan of tucking in at the back and making my way through the field. There was some bunching at the start and someone went over, but I missed the mess and could see Chris' distinctive white top speeding off.

I over took Chris (who seemed to have tummy issues) at mile one on the uphill and flew down the steep decents. I could see Karen and Steve battle it out ahead of me and even with a big push in the last mile I had nothing on them - Karen won out by a few seconds and that battle was decided 40 seconds before I got to the line. My finish was hard work, but strong. Let a lady overtake me and tucked in until the finish, group of four kicked for the line and I managed to sneak over the line ahead of her.

My time was 18:27 with mile splits of lap 1 6:11 min/miles or 3:51 min/km; lap 2 6:26 or 4; short 5:49 or 3:40 - HRT was lowish for a race, I don't think I'd warmed up properly! This was still 14 seconds faster than last September so I'm claiming this as a pb as this route is longer.

Chris finished in 19:01 - well done. Sort out the pre-race food at Aisha's workshop and you'll nock 30 seconds of that by September's race.

We set of back with some SEAC dudes and re-traced the route backwards as the recovery run. At one point I wandered why Chris was not saying much - he was some 300m behind us so I convinced the guys to wait up for him. Greg's lecture on Glucose and Fruitose and gels and fat content in mars bars went down better than the mars bar did.

Here's a shot of Steve from Locket Rockets and I after the recovery run back to the race HQ.



And finaly, here's the highlight of night. Fit blokes enjoying a drink together after a friendly race. What more could anyone ask for in a running event?


More about seac click here, races are first Thursday of the month April to September.