saturday part one: serpies

i took it easy friday night and enjoyed a casual dinner with Beth, frozen yogurt, and an early bedtime so that i could run with a new group on saturday morning! i need to start training more seriously for the lisbon half in march, and running with a group always makes me push myself more. since the work running club hasn't really panned out (we would up in the pub thursday night eating bangers and mash instead of running), i'm going to start running with the serpentines aka the serpies.

the serpies run around hyde park, etc. on saturday morning and you can drop your bag at a nearby leisure center.



the leisure center was a few blocks from the tube and i didn't really know how to get there, BUT i spotted a guy on the tube wearing running kit and carrying a backpack. I figured it might be a safe bet to follow him.

it was. :)

this is my third group in my career as a runner, and it was interesting to see some of the differences with this club, which is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) in london. for instance:

- we jogged about a mile to warm up.

- we did warmup exercises on speakers' corner once we were finished jogging. the exercises ranged from skipping, to running sideways, to other silly things that made us look like kindergartners at recess time. people on tour busses, who had come to see hyde park, were taking photos. :-) that said, the exercises were quite effective (legs are still sore today)

i opted to do the two parks route (hyde park and kensington gardens) because it was 4.25 miles. i considered the 7.25 miler but rejected it in the end since my mileage base is only about 5.5 right now and with the warmup jog, i would have been running 8.25 miles. i could have done it, but i don't like to increase my mileage that much week over week.

in the first mile, i met a nice girl who is training for the reading half (big pre-london marathon race). we stuck together for the rest of the run! afterwards, everyone went back to the leisure center for tea and i chatted with an american who i met on the warmup run (the guy i followed out of the tube, actually). we ended up going out for brunch and chatting until 2 pm, oops. expats have a lot to talk about i guess. :-O

i finally made it home around 3 pm and was exhausted. not much time for a nap though, because i was meeting my friends Pam and Andy for mexican food, which leads us into saturday part two!