Windsor Half

by Gareth Bird

Earlier this year Radio 2’s Chris Evans told his listeners he’d entered the Windsor Half Marathon, so I decided to enter on the spur of the moment. It would have been a good idea for me to check what time the event commenced as the 1pm start meant the risk of it being hot, and it was!

Race instructions were all on the website with just the race number arriving by post. Despite the 4,000 runners the traffic was fine via A-roads and parking was very close to the start in Windsor Great Park.  There were a few traders on site and a good atmosphere with music blasting out. The whole run was on surface roadways, allegedly slightly undulating, but in the words of Chris Evans in his post event interview, ‘that is not undulating, they are hills’! The start/finish is on one of the vistas with a great view of Windsor Castle, the course runs the perimeter of the Park, with no traffic and wide paths so overtaking is easy, just as is being over taken! read more

Leighton 10: A Winner Yet Again

The 34th Leighton 10 took place on Sunday 20th September with the 282 runners greeted with perfect weather, with the early morning mist and fog clearing to create some fine and cool conditions as they took to the start line.

Leighton Buzzard Athletic Club organise the event and this year had the largest number of finishers on the new route. The challenging, but rewarding course starts in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and follows the roads out into Heath and Reach, moves into Buckinghamshire and passes through Great Brickhill before returning back to Leighton Buzzard via Heath and Reach. read more

The Last Two Days

We entered Friday with tiring legs and the prospect of running just over two miles on the sandy undulations of Brickhill Woods looming before us having run every evening all week. The good thing was that in just over two miles the finish would be in sight, with just a final run round Willen Lake on Saturday between us and the finish.

Although Friday’s run is certainly hilly, it’s not the steepness that makes it hard. It is constantly either up or down, with lots of twists and turns, narrow paths and tree roots and stumps to look out for. It was a cool, dry and light evening that was actually pretty good for running a short distance and everyone wanted it over with quickly read more

Up Hill All The Way!

Day four of this year’s tour saw the field migrate to Campbell Park for one of the two courses that haven’t changed in many years. The route consists of a very fast start down the belvedere hill to the canal and then a long drag back up to the top before a second lap repeat to get it up to about 4.4 miles.

Elliot, Andy, Tom, Jo and Fiona were all on their fourth race, while Tim had registered a time for the course earlier in the week as he was unable to make the run on Thursday. These six were then supplemented by a few guest appearances from Pete Mackrell, Chris Norman and Adam Haylock who seemed to have forgotten that this is a hideous race and certainly not one to choose to run! read more

Running Fast!!

As a bunch of seniors within our club, we are very gradually improving when it comes to running short distances at high pace (relatively), but it is still a long way from our safe ground of 10K’s, half marathon’s and cross-country. Therefore the idea of rocking up to Stantonbury and doing a flat out mile is not that appealing to most of us. It is a small step into the unknown, but if ever you want to just see how fast you can do a mile then the middle of the Tour of MK is the place to do it. read more

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