London, Battersea 10K

The Battersea 10K an annual event where runners from all across London turn up to either dust off those cob webs or using it as a training run for what lies ahead. Being held in October it's a down to luck more than judgement what conditions the runners face. Last year was quite chilly whereas this year was perfect running conditions. Very few clouds in the sky, the sun shining with it's golden rays passing through the tree branches. The course is a 3 laps around the perimeter of Battersea park which runners share with dog walkers, fellow joggers and the odd squirrel.

I have run this event a number of times but due to not being running fit I passed up on running hard for forty minutes and instead opted to take
photographs of the 100 or so runners, running on my behalf. It was great to see some old faces and a pleasure to see some new ones too.
Due to the shear numbers trying to register, the scheduled 11am start turned out to be 11:30 but this didn't dampen the spirits of the runners who set off in an attempt to hopefully reach their pre race targets. It's a lovely scene seeing so many people head off in one direction, following the pace
biker en route. A few people in the park were kind enough to stop and offer their encouragement to the front and more experienced runners and even more ​so to the tail enders who through determination of not stopping would still finish the 10K event and can tick this off their list and proudly say "They did it"

For me, knowing the course helped as I found myself planning ahead where I wanted to stand to capture everyone at the start, during and middle of the
race. The plan was to capture everyone at some point of the race which would mean moving from one point to another, breaking out into a little run to get there before the next runners came by. With over 500 pictures taken, I would be very disappointed with myself if I wasn't able to do this? but moving location would need a quick look in my camera view finder to see if my new location has affected the lighting and would require a settings change within my camera to accommodate this? Capturing the race faces was fun from the more determined "leave me alone I'm concentrating/hurting" face to the "oooh there's a cameraman lets pose!!"  and I find those are the pictures I must not miss!

As I said the event is annual so I'm looking forward to this race in October 2016. I have uploaded all the pictures now which can be seen on my website :HERE: