Ranelagh Harriers - the running club that Sharon and I are members of - take part in four ‘Mob Matches’ each year. These are team races against other clubs and are a big part of Ranelagh’s tradition. The mob match against Blackheath & Bromley first took place in 1907 and Saturday was the 90th running.

Since last weeks Glasgow parkrun I thought my preparation was going well until I read that the length of the mob match was just shy of 8 miles! I’ve run 3 miles at most in a ‘session’ since the end of November so this week I needed to get a few miles under my belt. Two runs of five miles each on a gym treadmill was the best I could manage and that was my prep.

First thing Saturday I was out on my bike and put in just over 30 miles riding. A few hours later I was back in Richmond Park for the start of the mob match.

My plan was to run the first lap easy and then depending on how I felt I would potentially run a little harder for the second lap. Well, lets just say that the plan didn’t quite work.

The first lap was quite pleasant and it was lovely to be out in the park. My average pace was 7:33 minute miling - around the pace of my long runs during marathon/ironman traning. During the second lap I felt OK from a fitness point of view, but my legs just failed to keep up and my pace dropped to 8:33 miling! That explains the number of people who overtook me! For the entire run my pace averaged 8:07 miling.

I crossed the finish line as the 74th out of 123 finishers with a time of 63:16 for the 7.8 mile course. The winning time was 43:40. Looking back through my records I last ran the same course in November 2007 and averaged 6:34 miling to finish in 51:05.

Although much slower than before (12 minutes to be precise) I’m happy that I managed to get round the course in one piece. The next few days will tell me how my foot coped and whether I’m able to sustain my training. I just need to ensure that I don’t rush into running too many miles (er, like I did this week!)….