Midweek: Elswick Cemetery (and the Hill of Doom)

A bit later than hoped, but got back to the midweek runs today after my parkrun PB triumph on Saturday. Running from work, Lorraine asked on the way out where I was going to run and, typically, I didn't know. But I did say there's nothing attractive to the west, yet I'd not gone that way much. And that pretty much sealed it; west it was!

Elswick Cemetery. Pity about the van in this, cos the building itself was pretty impressive.

As soon as I stepped out onto Grey Street, I was greeted with sunshine... and properly leaden skies. The temperature was pretty mild (15°C-ish) but Google's earlier forecast for rain around 1pm was looking accurate. Sure enough, within a few minutes it started spotting and eventually drenched me for 5–10 minutes straight.

My route took me along High Bridge, across the Bigg Market, and on down... a continuation of High Bridge? I don't know the alley's name (Update: turns out it was Pudding Chare) and went down it purely to join up parts of my mental map of the city centre. Turns out it leads to the back of Wetherspoon's. From there, it was under the railway lines by the Mining Institute and along Forth Street towards and past the Times Square car park.

So far, so flat, but one of the supporting reasons for going west — other than it being the direction less travelled — was that it would give me a chance to get in some hills. So, once past Times Square, I turned up the slope towards Scotswood Road... but that was just the start of it. I had Elswick in mind.

Yep, that was definitely a hill.

Just a few hundred metres more and I crossed the road and faced the hill up to Summerhill. Reducing my pace, I headed up that and realised it just kept on going up. So I kept on going up, right up, to Elswick Park (turning point on an earlier run) — almost a solid kilometre of directly uphill. 😲

Today, my diary meant I had the time to go further, so I did. I carried on, looking for a major road that would take me back down to Scotswood Road and, hopefully, Newcastle Business Park. In the end, I didn't find that major road and opted instead to head down through Elswick Cemetery. That was pretty steep and, after another steep downhill stretch after it, I found myself traversing, just above Scotswood Road. Turned out I was quite a bit further west than I'd thought; by Newcastle Audi, in fact.

Crossing Scotswood Road there, I headed east into the business park along Monarch Road — which was the perfect downhill gradient, if my legs had been up to a sprint — and down to the riverside itself. I'd done a lot of the later stages of Couch to 5K here, so I knew I had roughly another 2K before I was back to the Swing Bridge. To this point, however, I'd heard only one announcement from Google Fit clearly enough and I began to doubt how far I'd gone. A quick look at the phone and it seemed I'd be hitting around 8km. Didn't quite make it in the end, but 7¾km was good enough.

Pace-wise, I hadn't been too bothered from the start. After doing such a quick parkrun, I was content to just get some miles in and not push for a fast time again. In the end, this run averaged 5:30/km according to Google (with 6:35/km for the big hill). Happy with that, as that's the pace I'm going to be aiming for on the Great North 10K in July. Naturally hitting that on longer runs is good.

Looking ahead, there's a chance my guide-running parkrun, which is scheduled for this Saturday, might not happen now. The person I'd be running with has a calf injury that won't go away. So, I'm a bit torn on what to do for a next midweek run. It'll be on Friday, but if I'm likely to be running by myself on Saturday, I'll make Friday an easy one. Otherwise, I'll probably go for a quicker, short run. Tempted to do the Rising Sun parkrun whether I guide run or not though. 🙂