Long Run - 29km (includes Doddington Hall Parkrun)

dannewton just finished a 29.11km run, that lasted for 179 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 2279.0 calories.

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Description from Strava: Its been another long and busy week, but I've managed to survive (just!) and it is now the weekend. Todays run fits in the same vein as previous weeks, and is the standard 'long run' with a sneaky 5km parkrun in the middle

Last week incorporated Yarborough Leisure Centre parkrun
2 weeks ago included Boultham Park parkrun

This week is time for a new one - Doddington Hall

It is located in the small village of Doddington, on the other side of Lincoln. It is farther away than the previous 2 parkrun locations, and after checking googlemaps I worked out a route that was just under 12km.

I did my best to make the route as direct as possible and yet still have a path to run on, and 12km was the shortest I could create!

With my current fitness/pace I estimated it would take approx 1 hour 15minutes to run to Doddington. As the event starts at 9AM, and the welcome briefing for new runners (ie me!) starts at 8:45. I decided to start at 7:20am in order to give myself enough time to get there, especially as it was a mostly new route I had not run before, and I also didn't want to rush

it was gonna be a long run today, I need to make it as easy as possible!

With that early start in mind, I made a concerted effort to go to bed early last night. My alarm went off at 6am, and I valiantly struggled out of bed at 6:15. I might have been able to get up and run immediately 15 years ago, but my body won't let me do that now.

I had just over an hour to wake up, and do the necessary eat/drink etc. I gathered my stuff together, including the all important parkrun barcode, and then I set off at just after 7:20

I'd been looking forward to this run all week, not only was it going to be a new parkrun location to tick off, but in creating the route map, I realised that 95% of the run would be on roads/paths/trails I had never run on before

it was gonna be great to explore some new places!

That exploring happened almost immediately, 5 mins after I left the house, I ran through a housing estate and left the village behind. I had ended up on the Viking Way (which is a long distance path starting in Hull and ending somewhere down in Cambridgeshire).

I followed the path down the side of a steep hill, and through some fields, before I turned off it and entered a more Urban area

This is in Brant Road, which some of my recent runs have run alongside off, but I've never joined it from this path before.

I turned right here and headed past (and crossed) some pretty busy junctions, and then on the other side I spotted a familiar sign:

Boultham Park!

This is my closest parkrun, but I'm not running here today...

After running along various streets, and past various houses and shops... I end up on Skellingthorpe Road

And this takes me past Hartsholme Park... its a small lake and some wooded areas, and has several paths around it. Its quite a pretty place, especially in Autumn when the leaves change, but as it is close to the city, it is very popular and gets very busy at times.

That said, I don't think I've ever run round here, I'll add it to my list of possible places to go

crossing another busy roundabout, the A46 here is part of the bypass around Lincoln, and is very, VERY busy

and then on the other side I head towards the village of Skellingthorpe

Just as I enter the village, I immediately turn right and take a small tarmac path which will take me to Doddington

when planning this route I was unsure what the path conditions were like. I had assumed that this path was going to be like a narrow farmers track or something, and would be muddy, or gravelly...

You can imagine my surprise when I see this beautifully smooth, relatively flat and 4ft wide ribbon of tarmac!

It turns out that this path is part of the National Cycle Network!

I speant a lovely 25-30 mins running along this path, and enjoying the surroundings, it was beautiful and even better when the sun came out on the way back.

Aha!

A Parkrun sign... I'm getting close!

200 metres up this path, I turned left and headed along another smooth tarmac path to hopefully where the start line should be

Made it!

It had taken me 1 hour 20 minutes to get here, so a little slower than expected (but that was mostly my fault as I kept stopping to take pictures...). The time was 8:45 which menat that I had timed it perfectly, and went to head over to the welcome area where all the first timers go

its a useful part of any parkrun, as lots of people travel and do 'parkrun tourism' and its an opportunity to explain to these about the course, or if there are any local quirkes that need to be explained.

Image Source - parkrun website

As it happens, the route at Doddington is super easy to explain/understand. It is a single out-and-back route (so no laps compared to my other ones), we start at the yellow pin on the map and head up and then left for 2.5km

At the halfway point, we do a U-turn and head back along the path and then down to the finish.

So first-timers brief done, we headed to the start line...

I made a little mistake here, in that I started to far back. The path might be relatively wide to run on, but it quickly gets congested when 300 try to run along it at the same time!

I spent the first 5 minutes weaving in-between slower runners

eventually I managed to get far enough forward with other people of a similar pace, and the field began to thin out a little

And then further up I could see people who were much further ahead, had already reached the halfway point and had begun to run back to the finish.

I was still trying to overtake at this point, and it as hard to find space to do that safely/sensibly in the gaps in the people coming back.

Pace wise, I had planned to keep it sensible and steady purely as I knew I had already run 12km, and still had another 12km to run back home after this parkrun was completed.

I had planned to keep it steady, but I got distracted by passing the other people, by the time I had settled into a 'steady pace' I was already at 5min/km

Oops!

As I started hard, I might as well finish hard, and so kept pushing to the line

Final position - 85 out of 285 participants

Parkrun token and barcode scanned (and after I had caught my breath), I turned and headed back home

I was unsure of where I was going, so I had made a GPS route on my watch, to help me get home

It really was a lovely route!

After meandering past Skellingthorpe, and through the edge of the city, I joined back onto the Viking Way. In that phot above, on the top of the hill you might be able to see a house? This was the edge of my village, and I was nearly home.

I just needed to get up that hill, and by this point I was knackered, so I'm not embarrassed to admit that I walked up this bit!

view from the top of the hill, overlooking Brant Road (and also Lincoln) in the distance

I eventually made home, 3 hours after I had started. It had been hard at the end, particularly after that 5km effort which had definitely had an effect

I checked the results:

...and I was surprised to see that I had managed a time of 24:45. I know I had pushed hard at the end, but I had assumed that I had gone so slow at the begining (due to starting near the back and getting stuck behind slower runners) that it would have had an impact on my time.

It was just 11 seconds slower than my PB last week, I wonder what I could have achieved if I had made a better start??

Anyway, in conclusion, I fully enjoyed that parkrun location, and of course the long un as well. Both Doddington Hall and the surrounding area was stunning, and I'll be back to run down here again. I do think Yarborough is still better in terms of PB potential, but I'd still like to try Doddington Hall again soon.

Note to self, start closer to the front for a chance of a better time

I also really enjoyed running on a lot of new paths/trails so I'm already planning some new routes to run to incorporate this in future runs.

For now though, I'm pretty tired. I'm gonna sort some tea out, and then put my feet up this evening and have a well earned rest. Tomorrow will hopefully be a little recovery run, and then I'll spend the rest of the day catching up on chores

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If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/12464954208

About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)

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