Trail running - Farthing Downs & New Hill/Happy Valley

March 13, 2023

I woke up this morning being Sunday 12th March with the plan to run 3hrs as part of my Manchester marathon training with the marathon only 5 weeks away. I did some house chores which included hoovering and then got ready for my run. I was out of the door at 9:15am

I then remembered I was pacing next weekend with Xempo for Kingston Spring Raceday at 10mins per mile. I thought well I should do some practice at that pace so that changed my plan for the run and decided to run for 90mins. I changed the settings on my Garmin watch to track my pace in miles as I always use kilometres 😊 trying something new, why not right?

I headed down Brighton road towards Coulsdon for my first mile landing at 9:57.5 pace ✅

I carried on down Chaldon Way for my second mile landing at 10:16.1 pace. I would give that an amber tick.

Then it hit me just like that, why not go to Happy Valley for some trail running as I wasn't far from it. The sun was out so sounded like an ace idea. So for the second time today my running plan changed during the run lol. This isn't something that usually happens but hey ho it did today.

I continued running and entered Farthing Downs around the 2.5 miles mark.

Here is where the trail run begins. Are you ready?

I ran up this interesting route

Then along this long path

Then I came to a standstill as I approached a choice of two paths:

Path 1

Path 2

Which Path did I go for?

⬇️

Path 2 ofcourse 👍 I don't like mud (if you read my first blog then you know that already). I am not a confident runner when it comes to mud, I have a fear of slipping so where I can avoid it then I say thank you very much 😊

Now comes my favourite part of this trail run. This part is where you stop start stop start running as you get lost in the beauty of this park, also known as "Happy Valley" and just keep taking pictures.

Now a few snaps of me ofcourse. Don't you just love the timer option otherwise have to bother people to take a photo. Thank you to the team at Maverick for sending me this t-shirt as a thank you for my blog for their event.

Love the back of the t-shirt "the outdoors awaits"

I turned right at this point. Next time will have to check out what lies ahead or to the left, so interesting right

I followed different paths not knowing where I was going at this point. Jumping over logs and ducking under low branches so pretty much an obstacle course which I was loving.