A Sunday morning in the Chiltern Hills.....

Yesterday I broke through the 200km mark of my 1000km challenge. On Friday afternoon I tried to think of a good run that would take me through the first few hundred km's. I was not able to travel anywhere far so I looked into doing a local run in Buckinghamshire.

The run started off from Saunderton, lead me up an incredibly steep hill towards Lacey Green, over to Speen and back to Saunderton.

At Lacey Green we made a brief stop off at the windmill there. The windmill dates from around 1650, making it the oldest smock windmill in the country. Since 1971 it has been restored back to working order by members of The Chiltern Society.

If you live local to Buckinghamshire and you didn't know of this windmill this is where you can find it www.laceygreenwindmill.org.uk

If you are a walker or a runner this area provides some lovely routes.
The particular route we took was incredibly hilly, with both steep up and downhill sections. So if you are in training for any hills this is a good route. I feel this run will be a good one to practice for the incredibly hilly 24.4km Nurburgring run I am doing in September.

On a Sunday morning after a hectic week at work I found I had very little energy. So warming up took a while, but once I was feeling a little more awake and into my stride I was able to fully enjoy the surroundings. The weather up on the hills in Bucks was bright and sunny, but in the area we were running it was misty and fairly cold.

All in all it was a lovely run, with some pretty quick kms and some pretty slow ones. However I can safely say I am no longer scared of hills, I have learnt to get on with it and run up them!