Crisis Sq Mile Race Report

Ignoring the fact that due to an number of excuses reasons including VERY late running trains, evening meetings and Mrs HMC's classes, I have missed Juneathon days 6,7 and 8, so Day 9 meant it was time for my first foray into the world of the Crisis Sq Mile.

An event that has been championed by numerous people as fun and a little different, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss plus I'd get to tick off June's race too.

I met up in Paternoster Square behind St Pauls with Cathy, Grant and Shaun and after donning the red shirt t-shirt and laying down for a bit for a photo opp, we started (surprisingly it seems) at 7pm sharp! I knew nothing of this race except that the roads weren't closed, we'd probably scare a few commuters and we'd cover many a sight of London. Distance... unknown. The only info I had was that last year (and bear in mind it changes every year), it was 7.3km.

So I continued my BUPA theme of pacing myself. That being say 'Sod it' and run as fast as is acceptable for as long as I could. The route (this year) took us from St Paul's, along Embankment, across Blackfriars bridge, looped round past the Millennium Eye, along the South Bank, back over Blackfriars, along Embankment in the other direction to, and across Southwark Bridge and then a loop round to finish after crossing the Millennium Bridge. It's lucky I'm a bit of a bridge geek really.

It's a great sight to see somewhere between 1000 and 2000 runners in red t-shirts hitting the streets Flash Mob style. It's an event I really enjoyed and I'd like to think I'll be back next year.

I finished the 6.71km (according to 2 Garmins) route in 31:26. That's an average pace of 'bloody quick for me' per mile.

And as it was this was another quick run (last 3 runs all under 8 m/m (5m/km) and Crisis at 7:32 m/m (4:42m/km) I now want to know how fast I can go. Every other time I've tried to speed up, I've picked up an injury but after recent conversations with both Grant and Shaun, a thought hit me while sitting on a stationary train for a long time last night (thanks SouthWest trains, twice in a week... nice). I'm not going to share my thoughts with you at this moment and not because of any secret 'build up the tension thing' or even 'I want no-one else to know thing'. It's purely that it could all turn out to be a load of crap so I want to test my theory first. It's not going to be a quick process but if I start to see an improvement soon, I'll let you know my thoughts. I'm going to be my own guinea pig!