9 am on another Sunday morning and it was time for another attempt at the 10.5 mile 6 Bridges Challenge route.
Joining me this week were (pictured from left to right) Tom Higham, Mike Lewis and Michael Downes. I've ran a few times with Mike this year and we worked together a few years ago. Michael is the brother of another former colleague. I just met Tom for the first time this morning. Like everyone who has joined me so far on this route, they have all seen me ask for company on Facebook and Twitter. I'm 100% sure that they won't be the last ones to join me after finding out about the run via those methods.
We set off at a pace not too faster than last week and before we knew it we had crossed the first 5 bridges with ease. We were running a good 30 seconds per mile by this point. I suspect this was well within the capabilities of all the lads. I should mention that Mike had previously ran 6 miles or so from Birtley to join us at the start. There was some interesting chatter all of the way round which was great considering that only myself and Mike really knew each other beforehand. But there you go; running does have a great habit of bringing like minded people together.
We finished back at the Millennium Bridge in 01:40:43, almost 5 minutes quicker than last week's time of 01:45:14. The full route and stats can be viewed here.
Despite the improvement on last week's time there are masses of room for improvement. That said, I'd like to keep this Sunday morning run as a nice friendly casual jog up and down the River Tyne. Let's save the serious stuff for later next year!
Meanwhile, after a quick stretch and warm down, Katy arrived with a plate full of bacon sarnies for everyone. These went down very well. Apologies though to Mike who I forgot is a vegetarian. Fried egg sarnies next time for Mike?
Anybody who fancies joining the 6 Bridges Challenge revolution should once again meet me at 9 am on the Millennium Bridge next Sunday. For now, tough, I'll leave you with the words of one of my followers on Twitter (Vicki Charlton). "I love this concept Mark. I rarely get home these days but next time I do, I'd love to give this a go :-)".
