As ever we met in the park at Abbey Gardens and what a sight it was as 21 runners turned up, mostly in fancy dress of one kind or another. We had skeletons, a couple of pumpkins, Batman, a cat, Santa, a warrior princess, Wednesday Addams, a ghost, a machete murderer and a bloodied cheerleader as well as a number of runners in normal kit!
After a warm-up and a bit of chat we headed out on a social run around the city. The aim was to do between 3 and 4 miles over the course of the hour, but keeping in the Halloween spirit I had set a “wicked” route.
I had decided that, despite being a social run, we should be made to work up a bit of a sweat and earn the cake we were going to eat later. We therefore started by running the first mile and a half of the Winchester half route…basically an uphill slog taking in St James’ Hill up to the hospital and then along to the roundabout at the top of Chilbolton. This was the hardest section of the run and once we got to the top of Sleepers Hill it was literally downhill from there.
It was amusing seeing normally dressed runners being chased by all manner of creatures from the underlands…it looked like some weird kind of zombie invasion!
We ran down Sleepers onto Airlie Road before turning into Christchurch road (parallel to St Cross). From here we headed down to St Cross and across into Kingsgate Road. We followed this all the way down the Cathedral.
We then headed through the square where the Christmas Markets are held, round the front of the cathedral, back to the High Street and down to Abbey Gardens. This came out as around 3.8 miles.
Anne, Philippa, Sharon and Rachel had bakes a host of cakes for the runners to enjoy after their run. The sale of these and the proceeds from the running raised £120 for Anne's charity, Leonard Cheshire Disability. Amazing work runners!!
There will be a full write-up of the AGM in the next blog.
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