Race Report - Greenwich MoRun

Bright and early on a Saturday morning I headed down to Greenwich for the 10k MoRun. This was the last in the series of MoRuns that had all been held in Movember to raise awareness and funds for prostate and testicular cancer.



I was quite nervous for this race, it was my second 10k and 3rd race, if you can count the race for life as a real race. I had been warned Greenwich park was quite hilly and so not knowing what to expect made me even more nervous, I've done the distance and a lot further plenty of times, and i always try to include some hills in my run, but you never know if it's enough.

I arrived two hours before the race was due to start because you had to register to pick up your race number and chip. This was bit of a mistake on my part, I didn't need to get there anywhere near as early as that so spent the next 2 hours standing around shivering as there wasn't a lot to do pre race.



Around 9:30 it started to get a lot busier. It was a lot of fun seeing people in fancy dress, from Holk Hogan to Freddy Mercury and even a Storm Trooper! And of course there was a lot of moustaches, real and fake. We had a great 10 minute warm up that involved working with a partner and then it was time to head to the start line!

The course itself was two laps of the park and involved a lot of zig zagging and hairpin turns, but despite the crazy route it was relatively easy to see where you are meant to go.

Like with most races there was a lot of congestion at the start, this wasn't helped by the narrow pathways but soon this opened out into a wider road which allowed everyone to settle into their stride.

[caption id="attachment_954" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Vita Coco was on hand for after the race[/caption]

Running through the park itself was quite pretty, but a tad bit on the boring side, just lots of green fields with very little else to look at other than the guys in fancy dress. Still, beats my normal long runs along all the roads running through town.

Now let's talk about those hills. In my mind there was 3. The first was at the 2km/7km mark, it was a gentle incline but quite long, that was fine I can handle that. The second hill was just before the 3km/8km mark, it was quite  a short distance but it was very steep, a lot of people had to walk this hill but no, I even powered on through this one. The final hill though, the one just before the 4km/9km mark, that was a bitch of a hill. On the first lap I was running and just felt like I was getting nowhere and my legs felt heavy, confused I looked around and realised I was on a hill. The sneaky bastard had hidden it's incline well and then halfway up this already hard hill it got even steeper. I had to walk this hill on both laps which I felt quite disappointed about. Oh, and there is only one small part of this course that is really downhill, it's a hard course.

[caption id="attachment_955" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Post race bacon sandwich anyone?[/caption]

The crowd support for this race was brilliant. At the start/finish line there was a lot of supporters all shouting their hearts out. There was also random groups of supporters all throughout the course and because the race was taking part in Greenwich park which is open to the public, you got a lot of families who where  out for the day who would cheer you on as they walked around the park, there is nothing more heartwarming then a tiny boy with mittens wishing you luck.

At the end of the race you are greeted with a fantastic moustache shaped medal, foil blanket, choice of vita coco water or Lucozade sport and a hot bacon sandwich, which went down a treat.

Oringally I had wanted to get a PB for this race and was aiming for 1 hour 5 minutes, but after I heard about the hills I scrapped that idea. Well, despite the hills and having to walk parts I managed to get a PB with a time of 1 hour, 4 minutes and 33 seconds beating the target I had set for myself and knocking 4 minutes off my Spooky Sprint time. I could not be happier with that time and now I'm thinking a sub one hour 10k isn't so far out of my reach.



The race is a little on the pricey side at around £27, but I think this has been my favourite one so far, even with all the hills! The atmosphere is great, there is plenty of crowd support, fancy dress makes everyone happy, the medal is awesome and where else do you get given a bacon sandwich afterwards!