SMC run 9th June

Day 161 Saturday 9th June 14.4 miles : miles to date 1088.4

After what seems like quite a long break, I was back out with an unusual mix for today's SMC run. It's not the runners themselves who were individually unusual, but rather the blend that came out. We were joined by two Bedford Harriers for the first time, who wanted to check out the route diversion on leg three of the pending Greensands Ridge Relay run, as did Annie " I've only run this leg 7 times and I'm not sure if I have it in my mind yet " Paige. What was really nice though was that we were also joined by two newbies to the SMC, in Jo and Paresh Aatkar which was just great and the return of Niki Rouse who has been out injured since February. To top it all, Sue Jones joined us to make sure her hubbie got the route right. He didn't.   

Annie doing an Irish jig before the start and Niki hoping not to get injured again

Bedford Harriers interlopers!

Annie telling us about the fish she caught 

My bodyguards

We waited at the start for David Cook and Chris Jenart to turn up, which unusually they didn't. Well I say they didn't, but David make the mistake of mailing me later and saying that he had in fact turned up early in his red slippers and realised that perhaps they weren't the best footwear for cross country running. The bloke has retired and bought a motor home two weeks, so understandable really. No sign of Christoff though.

We were only intending to run part of the Greensands and do maybe 12 or so miles, without any real plan. We headed off on a wandering cross country route towards the direction of Woburn, taking in part of the John Bunyan route. The Bedford interlopers were taken by surprise by our pace. We were far slower than they had thought and intentionally got slower. Saturday runs at the moment at least are dictated by the speed of the last runner and on a gentle jaunt like today, it made no difference how slow or fast we went.

Still, it was nice to have a chat with Rob and Carla, to get a bit of an insight to their club and how things work. It seems the clubs are quite alike in terms of our structure and different types of groups. It was also great to have a long chat with Paresh who I have known from afar, but never run with outside of club sessions. Both he and Jo came out for the first time and cranked out a 14 plus miler, not having run that far for a sometime. I didn't know that Paresh is a marathon runner, which is a surprise given I thought I knew all the marathon mile munchers. Jo is a tri-athlete and can do everything, which I admire particularly as I can hardly swim a length of the local pool.

SMC's much missed friend Niki Rouse, also made a very welcome return to the fold. Having picked up the dreaded plantar fasciitis early this year, she has been out for almost four months. To any runner that is a huge amount of time and she has been clearly pulling her hair out. Another of the fold, Jerry Day, has been out for sometime and whilst he didn't come back, any SMC runner with an injury is missed by the others. Sue has also struggled for ages with an injury and fingers crossed, she looks as though she has turned a corner, putting in a great run.

So today was half new SMC runners with the other half made up of a few regulars and a returning veteran. We have in the recent past had as many as twenty two out on a Saturday and out of that number, only four today appeared. That in itself made today's saunter very nice, as it meant I had time to get to know the newbies much more so than I could have done if the full brigade had turned up. 

As for the run itself, we wandered as we do, all over the place crossing a number of well known local trails including John Bunyan and Greensands. We were meant to do about twelve, but satnav took us off through a golf course, followed by a very dicy run along a narrow, bendy and fast A road whilst looking for a route into the forest on the other side of the road. We didn't find it and had to do a longer loop, with the eventual distance being a few miles longer than vaguely planed. Still, it was as always a lovely cross country run with my fellow club runners which I very much enjoyed. 

Jo and Paresh at the end, looking as good as they did at the start