For full disclosure purposes, I received an entry to The British 10K London Run for free in return for a race recap/review blog post. I was not paid to write this post and all opinions are my own.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in the Vitality British 10K London Run. I'd heard good things in the past about the race and was looking forward to taking part. The British 10K is known for the sights, they had changed the course this year with many more landmarks to see.
As I don't live in London and very rarely visit apart from races, I knew it would be an awesome way to see the different sights.. and what better way than to capture everything on video too! I have a video of the race which I'll put at the end of this post if anyone is interested in watching it.. but for now I'll get onto the race recap!
The Morning Of..
Phillip and I were up spectacularly early.. around 5AM. We are dog sitting, as I've probably mentioned already and we had to take the dogs out before we left to travel for the race.
As usual with races that we do in London, we had a 1 hr drive from home to Epping and then almost an hour on the tube to get to Embankment station which was the nearest station for us. There was then about a 10-15 minute walk to the start line from there which wasn't too bad!
We walked under the Admiralty Arch and up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace for our first landmark of the day. We went up through Green Park towards Piccadilly for the start line. I said my goodbyes to Phillip as we were in separate waves and I went to go meet up with a couple of bloggers before the race started.
The Race
The race started on time, we all moved forward in our waves. There was a traffic light system for stopping people every so often so that it wasn't congested which was great.. except I got stopped as the other bloggers went forward..Booo! I had to wait a minute or two before starting and this meant I ended up going WAY too fast since I was right at the start of the next 'wave'.
The route starts on Piccadilly towards Piccadilly Circus, taking in Regent Street, Pall Mall and St James Palace.We then turned right towards Trafalgar Square and then a left into Charing Cross Road.
There was a nice downhill part of the route leading onto the Embankment before turning left towards the city. Another left took us into Temple Place and then a wide turn back onto the Embankment Westbound for 2K before turning onto Westminster Bridge(which I remembered from scenes on James Bond.. ;)).
We made a U-Turn at the front of the South Bank Lion Statue to face Big Ben and Houses of Parliament, taking a loop of Parliament Square and then heading towards the finish line on Whitehall.
The route had a lot of out and backs which I don't mind too much in general and since there was lots more to see on this route, it was fine! The route was lined with spectators which was great coupled with the Charity Groups too. There were lots of charity runners that I saw which is always great to see, I even saw a some fancy dress including a guy dressed as Big Ben(see my vlog below)! There were also lots of bands and DJs out on the route so you didn't really need music and it made for a great atmosphere for runners and spectators.
There were plenty of toilets out on the route and 3 water stations - I didn't use either, but they looked well organised from what I saw. I brought my own disposable water bottle to sip on before the start but ended up carrying it up until after the second water stop - so I didn't need to slow to grab water.
Overall Thoughts
Generally, I felt really good for this race, far better than I thought I would feel. I ran OK, with a couple of my miles being under 10 mins and considering the fact that I was filming the race, I expected to be slower than usual but I came in at 1.04.03 which I didn't think was too shabby - the course measured longer than 10K for me and ended up coming in at 6.5 miles.. not sure what everyone else got, Phillip registered a longer course too.
It was probably the first race in a long time where I've fully enjoyed myself and not really questioned why I bother racing! haha - I really enjoyed GoPro-ing the race and will definitely be continuing this in the future - in fact I have another coming up this week!
This race has been, by far, one of the best ones that I've done thus far. The support was fabulous, the course was great and there was so much to see. The race was well organised, as per usual for Vitality and the medal and t-shirt were really great!
I don't have a bad thing to say about this race and I definitely think it's a must do if you don't get to go to London very often! In fact.. you can already pre-register your interest for next year HERE!
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If you're interested, you can check out my video for the British 10K below:
As I don't live in London and very rarely visit apart from races, I knew it would be an awesome way to see the different sights.. and what better way than to capture everything on video too! I have a video of the race which I'll put at the end of this post if anyone is interested in watching it.. but for now I'll get onto the race recap!
The Morning Of..
Phillip and I were up spectacularly early.. around 5AM. We are dog sitting, as I've probably mentioned already and we had to take the dogs out before we left to travel for the race.
As usual with races that we do in London, we had a 1 hr drive from home to Epping and then almost an hour on the tube to get to Embankment station which was the nearest station for us. There was then about a 10-15 minute walk to the start line from there which wasn't too bad!
The Race
The race started on time, we all moved forward in our waves. There was a traffic light system for stopping people every so often so that it wasn't congested which was great.. except I got stopped as the other bloggers went forward..Booo! I had to wait a minute or two before starting and this meant I ended up going WAY too fast since I was right at the start of the next 'wave'.
 |
| Original photo from Vitality |
There was a nice downhill part of the route leading onto the Embankment before turning left towards the city. Another left took us into Temple Place and then a wide turn back onto the Embankment Westbound for 2K before turning onto Westminster Bridge(which I remembered from scenes on James Bond.. ;)).
 |
| Original photo from Vitality |
The route had a lot of out and backs which I don't mind too much in general and since there was lots more to see on this route, it was fine! The route was lined with spectators which was great coupled with the Charity Groups too. There were lots of charity runners that I saw which is always great to see, I even saw a some fancy dress including a guy dressed as Big Ben(see my vlog below)! There were also lots of bands and DJs out on the route so you didn't really need music and it made for a great atmosphere for runners and spectators.
There were plenty of toilets out on the route and 3 water stations - I didn't use either, but they looked well organised from what I saw. I brought my own disposable water bottle to sip on before the start but ended up carrying it up until after the second water stop - so I didn't need to slow to grab water.
Generally, I felt really good for this race, far better than I thought I would feel. I ran OK, with a couple of my miles being under 10 mins and considering the fact that I was filming the race, I expected to be slower than usual but I came in at 1.04.03 which I didn't think was too shabby - the course measured longer than 10K for me and ended up coming in at 6.5 miles.. not sure what everyone else got, Phillip registered a longer course too.
It was probably the first race in a long time where I've fully enjoyed myself and not really questioned why I bother racing! haha - I really enjoyed GoPro-ing the race and will definitely be continuing this in the future - in fact I have another coming up this week!
This race has been, by far, one of the best ones that I've done thus far. The support was fabulous, the course was great and there was so much to see. The race was well organised, as per usual for Vitality and the medal and t-shirt were really great!
*
If you're interested, you can check out my video for the British 10K below:
Question: Did you run the British 10k this year? Have you run it in the past? What the next race on your calendar?
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