A Journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step

Longleat 10k - 2007

It was dark when I left home to cycle the 20 miles to Longleat.

This year I had arranged to visit Roger for a cup of tea and warm my feet up, although it was not as cold as last year when my water bottle on the bike froze.
I arrived at Rogers a bit earlier than I had expected so we had plenty of time for tea and for me to get changed from cycling to running gear, then we jogged the 2.5km to Longleat House. A nice gentle warm-up for Roger and a loosening up for running for me.
I met a couple of other friends, Chris and Jane who were running as well; we split up to go to our self seeded starting positions. We never saw each other at the start, I knew Chris was in front of me and Jane behind.,
I think that I must have got my starting position about right, a bit far back if anything. I found that I was constantly passing people for the first couple of miles. Passing people does give you physiological boost so it's not necessarily a bad thing starting a bit far back.
It was certainly easier without the numb feet of last year. In fact it was quite a bit warmer than last year so I was running in t-shirt and shorts.

Somewhere in the grounds

The 'hills' were not as hard as I remembered then from last year; they still slowed me down though! At least there is some variety on the course, not just a flat uninteresting one. As we came along the drive to the finish I tried to keep up with other runners who were also speeding up for the finish. This seemed to confuse the goat that had appeared on the course in the last 1/2 mile, I think it was safely escorted away by one of the staff.
The timing clock over the finish was just ticking over to 46 min as I passed, so I knew that I had done better than last year because my chip time would be faster then the gun time because it took me about 30 seconds from the gun to cross the start line.
All I have to do it take another 30 seconds off next year to do it in less than 45 min!