I've had a week of two longer runs than usual, mainly because I've been in the mood for exploring a few new routes, in particular I've been trying to join up a few of the local South London parks...
This is quite a tricky business to carve out a route on back roads mainly and having to rejoin the major roads at strategic places because main roads are often the only ones which go across the numerous local train tracks.
I think I did a reasonably good job of carving out routes with minimal crossings of main roads, which mean it's more likely you'll have to stop to wait for traffic, and which are generally just a lot less pleasant and can involve a lot of people dodging.
Run 1 The usual 6K!
My usual local 6K at a decent pace, not a lot else to say, happy enough with this, not too fast, not too slow!
Run 2 - Two Beckenham Parks...
13Ks taking in the smaller park and then a loop around some of Beckenham Place Park.... I ended up coming back down a fairly major road and junction near Tescos which I had hoped to avoid, but couldn't given where i'd exited the smaller park on my return route, because of that junction being far nearer for crossing the rail lines.
13Ks was defo enough, I was quite tired after this!
Potential to up the distance here quite a bit, by running a larger loop of the larger park!
Run 3 - Crystal Palace and South Norwood Parks, three park 10K loop
My usual CP loop is more of an out and back with 2 loops of CP park, with this run I wanted to do a proper longer circular route and end up at the same park I do my usual 6K run in, mainly because I had to do a Tesco shop straight after.
This was solid... up to CP, then back roads to one smaller park, through that, then back roads to the larger final destination park.
I managed this new route with only TWO major road crossings, very happy with that.
This was a bit stop start as I paused to work out my quite twisty and turny back road route!
Next Week's Plans...
Not 100% sure what is next... defo a short run tomo, and then maybe some more short runs before a proper long run this weekend....?
Will have to see how it goes...
Those longer runs seem like an awesome way to find hidden treasures in the parks.