On Saturday I joined Charlene, Sarah, Mandy & Becky for the infamous Haddon route (I have heard alot about this route over the past few weeks). I was fairly worried about this as I knew it was a 9 mile loop, not to bad as I've covered this distance before, more concerned that Sarah, Mandy & Becky run nearly 4 minutes faster per mile than Charlene and myself do, but I'm always up for a challenge.
When we set off the others ran off ahead at their pace and had promised to loop back round to check we were ok, Charlene and myself stuck to our normal pacing and I was feeling good. We first took the same route up to Strawberry Hill (thankfully going past not up) where the others had stopped to wait for us. Charlene was starting to struggle and had stopped to walk so Mandy dropped back with her and I went off ahead with Sarah and Becky, I was making a concious effort to keep my pace up but to stick to something I was comfortable with as I didn't want to burn myself out. I found the route really interesting, I think because I had never run this way before and to be honest had no idea where I was. Sarah dropped back to help Charlene and I stuck with Becky for miles 4 & 5 (hence why they are slightly faster split times), we looped back a couple of times to check everybody was ok.
And at mile 6...the infamous Haddon Hill arose, I have never seen anything like it. I would like to let you know that Peterborough is as flat as you can get. I dug deep and powered my way up, only stopping briefly at the top to catch my breath back. From this point Becky and myself stayed on ahead, with the others only slightly behind, Mandy kept alternating between the two groups and it was really nice to have different people to chat to, I think this really helped as it took my mind off things.
The last 2 miles, I was starting to struggle, I have never run more than 7 miles without stopping and I was feeling it. Nothing noticable, my legs felt ok and so did my breathing but I felt exhausted. I pushed through and suprisingly managed to keep up my pace and I made it back. All 9.3 miles as we looped back a few times. I'm so proud of myself.
Looking at my splits I maintained a really good pace, you know except that massive hill!!!
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