Week 16, race 18: British 10k London Run

This week's run was the Britsh 10k London Run, a 10km run based in central London. I hadn't planned on doing this but Julie B donated her unwanted number to me so I thought I may as well give it a go.
I had to get a train at 7:30 (and typically my beloved children chose today to have their yearly lie in so I didn't get to appreciate it), destination Picadilly Circus. There were around 20,000 entrants so understandably it took a while to get out of the tube station (15 mins!) and to walk down to the bag drop.
There was a HUGE toilet queue so I decded to follow the signs to the start instead of waiting. Turned out to be a good plan as there were more toilets with much shorter queues.
The start was quite a long walk away, it was a slightly weird experience as we were ushered along london roads, past the ritz, green park and further along Picadilly towards Wellington Arch. Turned out the pen system at the start was more of a first come first served system so if you arrived early you'd be in pen 1 and if you arrived late you'd be in pen 6. I am glad I wasn't too late to the start :-)

Took me 12 mins to get over the start line (and at this point there were at least as many people behind me yet to start). I spent a lot of the first few km weaving in and out of people walking (some in the first km!) while faster people weaved in out of the rest of us. It calmed down after a while so there was less dodging and plenty of room to run. The race route was up down and round various streets in central London including running past Westminster Abbey and Big Ben
The finish was on Whitehall near Downing St and I finished in 59:59 (my watch) or 1:00:01 (official chip time). I was really pleased with this, my best time all year (and probably for a good couple of years!).
I very much enjoyed the race, thanks Julie!
Almost halfway in the 40/40 challenge...amd I've just hit the 100 mile mark in miles raced!