Adder

We went for lunch and a walk in the New Forest today with our friends Paul and Katty Woolcock and spotted this adder in the middle of the footpath! Never seen an adder in the wild before!

Lymington 10K race

Today was my first post-baby race. I'd decided to enter the Lymington 10K a couple of months ago, as a way of keeping motivated in my training, and because the race has excellent reviews.

The course is flat, and a mix of road, trail, grass and gravel (and halfway round the course a couple of big puddles to navigate!). It takes in some stunning scenery running along the harbour wall, looking out onto the Solent and across to the Isle of Wight. Being a Sunday, the Solent was very picturesque with numerous sailing boats on the water. It was a cold, cloudy, breezy morning, but once the run started that wasn't a problem, although quite a strong headwind for the second half of the race!

The course has a wide running route all the way round, so there wasn't alot of congestion. In the first couple of kms, quite a lot of people had decided against pacing themselves and overtook me, but it was rather satisfying overtaking them all walking from 6km onwards!

I was aiming for under an hour, not wanting to put any pressure on myself to get anywhere near my PB (50mins at the Millenium Runs on 10K race in 2009). I'm therefore chuffed with my result today of 58:24! Not bad considering I only had Eden 5 months ago.