Running the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler
Perfect Spring marathon tune-up race on a fast, flat and scenic course
The Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler is a UK Athletics-accredited event and is one of three races held in March each year, starting in the Market Place of the historic city of Kingston-upon-Thames. The timing makes the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler an excellent tune-up race if you’re running a Spring marathon as it’s around a month out from the Manchester Marathon and London Marathon.
There are three distances available on Kingston Spring Raceday: 8 miles, 16 miles and 20 miles. They all follow the same initial 8-mile loop, with the 16-miler and the 20-miler going round for a second time, and the 20-miler having an extra 4-miles out-and-back to make up the distance.
So if you’re thinking about running the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler (or the 8-mile or 16-mile version), here’s what you can expect.
Pre-race Organisation
Race sign-up was very easy through the organiser’s website. Quicksilver Running hosts an event page with a decent amount of information, including course maps and participant information.
About two weeks before the race, Quicksilver Running sent an email out with more detailed race information, including logistics and confirming a minor change to the course route due to engineering works on the Kingston Bridge that affected the 2023 edition of the event.
Runners had the opportunity to pick up their race packs from a local running shop in Teddington prior to race day, but could also collect everything on the day of the race itself, which is what I opted to do.
A nice touch was offering those driving to the event a discounted rate on car parking at the Eden Street car park, which was a flat £8.50 fee rather than the variable per hour rate (which would’ve been £16.50 for me — so a decent saving).
Kingston Spring Raceday is an early start — the gun goes off at 08:00 — but there were plenty of volunteers at the Market Place Start Village from 07:00, so even if you had any last-minute issues there was someone on hand to help.
Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler Course Profile
The Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler starts and finishes in the Market Place of Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s a lapped course along the Hampton Court Palace Towpath, then heading along Hampton Court Way to East Moseley before circling back towards Kingston along Portsmouth Road.
One lap is 8 miles, two laps of this gets you to 16 miles, and then there’s an out-and-back section that goes along the south side of the River Thames and re-joins Portsmouth Road, before U-turning and heading back into Kingston to give you 20 miles.
The terrain is mostly pavement, but the towpath is a combination of trail-type surfaces, tarmac and concrete, with the odd cobblestone section in there as well.
There’s no real elevation to speak of — just 210ft for the 20-miler — other than the inclines as you cross Kingston Bridge and the bridge on Hampton Court Way. There’s also a short incline around Mile 17 as you head back up to Portsmouth Road from the River Thames walkway.
Despite the laps, the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler is an enjoyable race full of excellent scenery. The support from the dozens of Quicksilver Running volunteers was brilliant, and the water stations were also well-staffed and organised.
Market Place Start Village
The Kingston Spring Raceday start village is in the historic Market Place of Kingston-upon-Thames and is well set up with race pack collection tents, bag check and a bunch of food and drink stalls that opened a little later on.
Toilet facilities are a 60-second walk away, and while there was a bit of a queue close to the race start time, people tended to flow quite smoothly through the process, helped by there being a men’s urinal available as well.
As 08:00 approached the Market Place did get rather congested — particularly near the slower pace start waves — but everyone seemed to find their place easily enough and take up a position near a pacer for their target time.
Kingston
The Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler starts in the Market Place and for the first half mile winds through the streets of Kingston, before heading towards the River Thames and over Kingston Bridge.
You do need to keep your wits about you during this section as the streets are fairly narrow and there are bollards, kerbs and a cobblestone road to contend with. Later on in the race there is also road traffic and pedestrians, so you definitely need to pay attention to where you are running to avoid losing too much time and causing a disturbance.
But once you’re up and over the bridge and round the corner on to the Hampton Court Towpath, it’s easy running.
Hampton Court Towpath
The Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler goes along the Hampton Court Towpath on the north side of the River Thames for about 3.5 miles. The surface is variable along this section, with a combination of trail, tarmac and concrete, and in the 2023 race it was also covered in puddles from the overnight rain. Despite this, it was a good section to lock in your pace and take in some of the sights along the river, passing boathouses on your way to Hampton Court Palace.
There’s a slight incline at the end of the Hampton Court Towpath as you head up on to Hampton Court Way, past East Moseley station and the first water station, and then it’s a good 2-mile stretch along pavements until you hit a left-hander at Scilly Isles and turn on to Portsmouth Road.
Portsmouth Road
If you’ve run the Hampton Court Palace Half then this route should start to become very familiar, as it’s essentially the same course but in reverse. For some reason, going east along Portsmouth Road seems to be a lot more interesting than running the opposite direction, but maybe it’s just me!
You’ll cross a bunch of roads along this stretch, all staffed by marshals to help with traffic flow. The second water station is around Mile 6, then it’s a 2-mile stretch back to Kingston and the Market Place.
Lap 2
Back at Kingston Market Place, you bear left and start Lap 2 if you’re running the 16-mile or 20-mile race, or bear right to the finish line if you’re doing the 8-miler.
There’s a third water station in the Market Place, and although the toilets should’ve been accessible from the race route I ended up running past them as there’s no signage from the race route. It seems like signage was placed for the benefit of runners pre-race, leading from the Market Place, but not coming the other way while running.
Lap 2 is identical to Lap 1, winding through the streets of Kingston before going over Kingston Bridge and back along the Hampton Court Towpath, then Hampton Court Way and Portsmouth Road.
Out-and-Back
Those running the 16-miler finish at the Market Place after the second lap, but if you’re running the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler you still have a 4-mile out-and-back section to contend with.
Bearing left through the Market Place and past the water station, you run through the streets again but when you hit the river, instead of turning right to go over Kingston Bridge, you turn left and head along the riverside.
It was starting to get a little busy as I ran through this section, with couples and families out hunting for brunch and walking dogs. It apparently got rather congested later on in the morning, so wasn’t ideal for giving it all you’ve got in the last few miles.
After about 1.5 miles the route pops back up to Portsmouth Road heading westbound, before doing a U-turn and following the route back to the finish line at the Market Place.
Finish Line
Your third time at the Market Place and this time you take the right-hand side to run through the finish arch and complete the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler.
After having your timing chip cut off, you’re given a snazzy medal and a bag to fill with race swag, including branded buff, chocolate, all sorts of lotions and potions and water. It’s a great finishers’ pack!
By this time, the stalls in the Market Place are open, so you’re free to gorge yourself on bread, pastries, cakes, sandwiches and other treats, or visit one of the dozens of places serving brunch. You’re really spoiled for post-race nourishment choice!
Race Strategy
I was running the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler as a key tune-up race for running the Boston Marathon a month later, so I had a race plan in mind early on.
My running coach at the Sutton Striders had only recommended running 16 miles, but as I’d already signed up for the 20-miler I decided to use the first two miles as a warm up, run the middle 16 miles at my target marathon pace, and then run the last two miles as a cool down.
After setting off a little too fast — the excitement of getting started plus poor GPS signal meant almost everyone shot off faster than planned — I eased into a fairly punchy warm-up pace around 7:00 mins/ mile, but because the Hampton Court Towpath section is pancake flat it wasn’t too much effort to hold this pace.
At 2 miles I sped up to target marathon pace, and ran fairly even 6:37 mins/ mile splits for the next 16 miles. There was the odd mile where I ran slightly faster while chatting with other runners, but my legs were starting to feel the pace a bit towards the end so my last couple of miles were slightly slower. But overall, I hit that 6:37 mins/ mile pace spot on.
The last 2 miles (or so…) were easy running, and it was actually quite nice to be running back along Portsmouth Road with others who were running at slower paces. I can imagine this section getting quite congested at times, but it wasn’t an issue as I ran along.
Due to a last-minute course change because of bridge engineering works, in the 2023 edition of the race, runners were informed that the 8-mile course would be a little long, however this wasn’t corrected for the 16-mile or 20-mile courses. This meant my total distance ran was 20.34 miles — one-third of a mile more than expected. This was a little disappointing as with the out-and-back final section for the 20-miler there was ample opportunity to put the U-turn slightly closer, but there you go…
Having jogged the last two miles it made for an excellent opportunity to sprint finish and claim my medal and swag bag!
Reflections
If you’re running a Spring marathon then the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler is an excellent event to test your fitness and practice race day routine. In 2023, it was 5 weeks prior to the London Marathon and 4 weeks prior to the Manchester Marathon (and 4 weeks and 1 day before the Boston Marathon, which was my key race).
Despite the look of it on paper, the route is actually very enjoyable and even the 4-mile out-and-back section at the end wasn’t too bad (although I spoke to a few runners who finished later and they weren’t happy with how congested that section was).
The fact that the race only has 210ft of elevation gain also makes it easy to focus on pace without too many headaches around race strategy.
I’m extremely glad I ran the Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler as it gave me a huge amount of confidence for race day, and was an enjoyable and scenic route to boot.
Well recommended.
If you’ve liked this race report, you can check out my other reports on Running the New York Marathon, Running the Berlin Marathon and Running the Athens Authentic Marathon.
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