7th – 10th of March – London and Kingston Breakfest Run

We lived in London back in ’86-’89, more exactly in Kingston (“Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames”). Since then I’ve visited London several times but I never returned to Kingston. That was due to a change, and when I saw they had a run in the spring it was hard to ignore. It wasn’t the usual half or full marathon distance, but rather an 8/16/20 mile run, the longest distance promoted as a good warmup for the London marathon 4 weeks later. So obviously I signed up for the 20 mile distance despite not running the London marathon – I felt like such a rebel.

In spite of the extensive train and underground network in London there is no good direct connection to Kingston from the central part of the city (the furthest “in” you can get without changing is Waterloo), but coming from Heathrow there was a direct bus which made it so much easier. 

Don't drink and phone.

I spent a few days walking around and reacquainting myself with the neighborhood. I was reminded how long time ago I last was here because everything felt both smaller and much closer together than I recalled. Hampton Wick station far away from home? 10 minute walk. The building at the far end of the road we lived on? Maybe 50 meters away. But other than that where we lived looked almost identical to how I remembered it. So it was quite eye opening and yet it was nice to walk around recognizing the different places I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years.

There were quite a few of these kinds of statues spread out throughout the center. 

 

The runs were centered around an 8-mile loop, so running the 16-mile run you ran it twice, and the 20-mile run required running it twice and adding onto that a smaller 4-mile loop. The start (and finish) was located on Kingston Historic Market, and from there we went north, circling the Bentall Centre before crossing Kingston Bridge. From there we followed the pathway along River Thames all the way to Hampton Court Bridge which we crossed and from there we followed the road (A309/Hampton Court Way) until reaching the roundabout past the railroad and turning onto A307/Portsmouth Road and basically following that all the way back to the market. Second round was identical except from going directly to Kingston Bridge from the market, bypassing the Bentall Centre. After the second round we once again crossed the Kingston Bridge, but only continued for app. 1 km before turning around, passing under the bridge before looping around and crossing in the opposite direction, looping around and running along the river (almost) parallel with the main loop, but opposite direction. Reaching Kingston Island we rejoined the main loop and returned to the market, finishing the 20 miles.

Nearing the Historic Market.

 

Running along the River Thames after crossing the Kingston Bridge. 

I managed to finish in 2:50:14, a result I was very happy about. That put me as 249 out of 582 overall (top 42,78%), 179 out of 320 men (top 55,94%) and 30 out of 49 in my age group (top 61,22). The relative results were quite a surprise – obviously some very serious runners doing that distance so the competition was tough. I am assuming it could have something to do with more casual runners go for the known distances (5k, 10k, half and full marathons) and these odd distances have less interesting – especially the longer ones.

Happy with the result I grabbed my medal and snacks, bought some cakes at the market and returned to my hotel less than 10 minutes away. The rest of the stay in Kingston was spent either relaxing at the hotel or sitting in a restaurant somewhere eating. My favorite thing(s).

Full album can be seen here.