Yesterday Mike was in the same boat as me (returning from injury and suffering for this troubles) but we both agreed that we'd be out on this fine Sunday morning for more of the same. Unfortunately, for reasons as yet unknown, Mike didn't make it and so that left me and Daniel and Amanda standing by the side of the road - waiting! Leaderless we hung on but eventually the awful truth could no longer be ignored; one of us would have to take up the reins and conjure an ad hoc route for our running pleasure. So I thought fast and figured that if we began by heading north, directly away from the Heath, then something would come to mind.
As it happened by the time we had wiggled our way through the posh side of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and reached Big Wood, a plan had begun to coalesce in my cortex. We could head over to the Dollis Valley and kill several birds with one decision - the path would be green and quiet, we'd be avoiding the main roads and it'd give us a chance to run a reasonable distance at an unbroken pace. The only question mark had to be when would we turn round and head for home? In my mind I figured that we could probably make it to the viaduct and then turn back through North Finchley - but this was a very fluid plan subject to circumstance.
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| Early on a winter's morning |
Which was lucky as we ticked over the forty minute mark while we jogged along the bottom of Church End and so I made the executive decision that we should immediately break off from the path - not that there was much discussion or even talking of any sort going on! This turned out to be somewhat inspired as this diversion led directly uphill, past North Finchley and on to Avenue House with no deviation. From here it was a simple matter to join East End Road and then loop down towards Winnington Road - taking care to actually avoid the bulk of its ascent by cutting through the Heath extension.
By the end all three of us felt like we'd put in a properly solid run - almost 15km at a steady pace - which wasn't quite what we'd expected when we'd turned up over an hour earlier. What pleases me most though is the fact that I managed to come up with an off-the-cuff route that was a pleasure almost from start to finish and that we hadn't had to travel a silly distance in order for it all to hang together. I can see us doing this one again - hopefully next time Mike will join us though rather than being left to experience it second-hand!
Distance: 9.1 miles
Time: 1h 21m 28s