Wedding Day 7k
The Wedding Day 7k is one of those running events that’s a firm favourite with many runners in our locality, and beyond. Pretty much as soon as the date’s announced, it goes straight into most runners’ diaries, with this year’s event selling out in TWO days. Devised in 1981 to celebrate HRH Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding, we are now in the 42’d running of this fun event, and it continues to be wildly embraced by married, unmarried, regal (read elite athletes) and non-regal alike.
For those interested, a detailed history of the Wedding Day can be found here: https://weddingday7k.com/#history
The event has a real ‘school’s out for the summer’ feel about it, especially as it’s held on a Friday night at the end of term. Running clubs congregate in vast numbers to turn this into a great social occasion, complete with picnic blankets, food & refreshments. With a bar, a gregarious prize giving and a ‘fun’ little jog before to make one feel good about the copious amounts of calories (especially in liquid form) ingested, what’s not to like?
The enduring question though is how the heck does one pace a 7km? For those not racing, the fun run atmosphere is joyous and relaxing. For those racing however, not least because the Wedding Day is included in the Surrey Road League, it’s a little less ‘relaxing’ or clear cut.
7 km is not 5km; nor is it 10k. Should one aim for a consistent pace to start, and surge strong in the last 2 km? Or should you go slightly faster than your 10k pace and see how you feel at the end? Surely going out at your 5k pace and hanging on for the last 2k is madness?
But as it turns out, most of us are slightly mad, judging by how many opted for the latter as their preferred strategy. Whether it’s a case of, ‘oh crap he went hard, so I’ve got to go hard’, or the thought of the beer at the end, there was a flurry of awesome performances from everyone.
And by everyone, we refer specifically to the horde of 63 Ranelagh that descended on Bushy Park for this year’s event. To put that into perspective, that’s almost a Ranelagh for every 10 runners that entered this year’s race. And although it is said that ‘less is more’, in this case it was certainly a case of ‘more is more’, as our strength in numbers earned us the Mob Match Plate.
But a singular plate was not enough for our Ranelagh mob. Our ever competitive men packed well in a very stacked field, and with 4 to score, the performances of Nick Impey (2nd overall), Joe Killip (4th overall), Marc Leyshon (12th overall) and James Whistler (13th overall) meant that they brought the impressive Stag Trophy home; erasing the bad memories of last year’s ‘scandalous’ timing chip failure of one J. Riley. For those keeping count, Ranelagh have now won it 9 times.
But it wasn’t just the men that shone. Proving that mums do it best, Sarah Palmer scooped the Local Prize. Admittedly we’re not sure what the criteria is/was but in keeping with the organic organised chaos that is the Wedding Day 7k, we don’t really care.
So, after the ‘fun run’, everyone happily settled into the picnic element of the event and with celebrations in full flow it marked a fitting end to another fabulous running year.
Ranelagh rah rah rah - onwards and upwards to September 2024!
Race report by Narissa Vox & Ed Perry
📸 Claire Slater-Gallon, Hadi Khatamizadeh, Kelly Thomas,
Candice Goddard, Peter Cook & many more.
Full results @ https://events.sportsystems.co.uk/results/?&q=wedding >
