When my sister booked a trip that came through London last weekend I immediately looked for a race for us to do. I conveniently forgot that small detail that she had just come from running the Budapest Marathon 30k the week before. Sorry legs!

The Serpentine 10 mile Club Championship race was the Cabbage Patch 10, and seeing it’s route went along the river in Twickenham I figured it would be a nice 10 mile sightseeing route if nothing else.

I signed us all up for this popular race before it sold out and set out researching recipes for cabbage in case we won one of the trophies.

It was easier than I expected to get to Twickenham for the Sunday 9:30am start (thank you 24-hour Victoria Line) and we made it in plenty of time to set up in the corner of the pub near the cucumber water (!!) while the rain poured down outside. A quick trip up to the nightclub to leave our bags and use one of the many toilets made available for us, we walked the 5 minutes to the holding street start line.

The race isn’t on closed roads so it’s a bit of a mass hurry-up-and-wait start until the volunteers lead you out to the busy road to start. I thought of it more as a parade and cheerfully waved at everyone out on their Sunday drive.

Having the sidewalk and 1 lane to run in for the first few miles was fine and it wasn’t too crowded where we were running. I saw lots of friendly faces from Serpentine and especially enjoyed the speed limit warning signs giving us the 🙂 when we were “only” running 7 miles per hour.

We ran through the lovely suburbs of Teddington, through Hampton Wick, across the river to Kingston and then through Ham even running down the avenue I helped clear back in 2015!

From there it was along the river past Richmond Park, across one more bridge and back Twickenham. I was pretty happy to be only 2 miles from the finish.

There were tasty flapjacks at the water stations and just after mile 9 some kids were on the side of the path telling us, “this is about to be the best day of your life….” around the corner was the Fullers Beer team giving out shots of beer and full cans if we wanted to run with them.

The last mile went by pretty quickly (the opposite of last week’s Oxford Half) and before I knew it we were on the home straight running down the bus lane into a park to the finish line.  A quick cheers with my sister before we turned around just in time to see Helen finish super strong with her can of beer safely stowed in her race vest. Alex was right behind her and with his can of beer already open!

At the finish we dipped into the buckets of mars bars and grabbed finishers shirts (lots of sizes left but all male style & sizing).

We walked back to the pub with our drinks while the sun came out and hung out in the sunny beer garden for a while waiting for the prize cabbage giving. Previous winner, Mo Farah, wasn’t entered this year but this year’s winners were just as fast and deserving of their cabbages.

We found another sunny beer garden to grab post-race burgers and shandys (holding on to summer!) and finally made our way back to North London after a little siesta when we accidentally got on the long train back to Waterloo.

The great race photographers (gotta love one who is ready for a jumping photo)  made their photos available for £3.95 after the race. The memes of mine have already started in a few WhatsApp groups…