Virtual Bowood 10K Race Report by Toni Cliffe

With the current world climate as it is, I had to complete my Virtual Bowood 10k alone. I had already completed a virtual run with Gary Young and Caroline Cozier earlier in the month, we ran together with Katie and decided we would do the same with Bowood, not realising the run would be solo.

We agreed 0800, however Caroline wanted to break up the day so went later. I hate running solo, I find it hard to muster up the motivation and I have never listened to music whilst running.

It was very quiet, met a couple of dog walkers who said hi, I then passed a cyclist and he shouted Happy birthday from a distance (he was my friends husband!) as I approached Langley Burrell, I knew it was down hill through the village. I kept looking at my Garmin to see if I had reached halfway point so I could turn round.

As I turned round to go back I started to think about all our recent training sessions, I thought of the driving arms and helium balloon, I thought of Biggsy’s demonstration during the RAMP part of our training (I had a chuckle!) and I thought of Brian EA coach, encouraging us to keep going if we are feeling knackered to get the results we want! And I was wondering whether Gary would beat me!

As I made my way back, I was plotting where I could run to ensure the last couple of miles were downhill, that long incline at the end of the chippenham half route was one I didn’t want to tackle, so made a detour and managed a very respectively time (for me anyway!) best 10k time in a while.

although I was unable to join my fellow runners, I was still as determined to get a good time which surprised me cos, did you know, I really don’t like running solo!

Good luck to all those solo runners out there, and hang on to what we still have!