Southbourne Fast and Flat 10K

Southbourne is between Christchurch and Bournemouth. This 10K is along an out and back course starting with 0.8K along a road to the promenade and then it's 4K along the prom as far as Boscombe Pier where you turn round. On the way out, the pier looked such a long way away: I could hardly see it to begin with.

Although the sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, there was a cold Easterly wind. So after going round the roundabout outside the pier, the return trip from 4.8K to 9.5K was a battle into this headwind as is clearly demonstrated by my splits: the return 0.5K splits are about 10 seconds slower than my outward splits.

Use this link to see a photo of the prom (used in the publicity of one of the sponsors).

So the Southbourne Fast and Flat 10K was flat but not very fast.

Although there were no cars along the prom, there were a lot of walkers, some cyclists, some stray dogs and some stray children: you had to manoeuvre a way through this lot!