Big Mug Of Tea

I headed down to parkrun slightly early on 21st December as my Mum was volunteering as a marshall. She’d got on board with the Christmas Fancy Dress theme by wearing a reindeer antler headband.

I was wearing my new Tikiboo Christmas leggings, yeah I finally jumped on the Tikiboo bandwagon. As well as an Elf Christmas t-shirt I picked up in Tesco for £6.50! The t-shirt made up for the cost of the leggings at least!

Trying not to look freezing!

After saying goodbye to my Mum so she could go to her marshalling spot, I got chatting to Nigel and Angela. I asked them what pace they were running (both said quicker than me) but since it’s Christmas they both said they’d run with me, which I was grateful for.

We ran, all three of us for just under a mile before Nigel start to peel away. Despite having a pretty serious knee injury, he’s still quicker than me!!

Angela and I chatted loads, mostly about work. We do completely different jobs but that’s what made the conversation interesting. As we were almost at the 2nd turnaround point we saw Nigel coming back towards us. He was steaming ahead! He’d told us at the start his wife had said he wasn’t allowed to overtake her, but he was ahead of her when we saw him!

After we’d turned around and were heading back towards the finish funnel I started to get a stitch. I lost all ability to hold a conversation anymore and said to Angela she could go on if she wanted to as I’d slowed right down but she said no and kept me going with lots of encouragement right through until the end.

I finished in 38:03. Quite some way behind the man who was first past the line and set a new course record of 15:31! He was over 2 minutes ahead of 2nd place!

In the background of that picture you can see two people taking a dip in the sea! I got chatting to them afterwards at the café. They were both wearing the tourist cow beanies so I went over and had a chat with them. They’d done 69 different parkrun venues so we had a lovely chat about some of the courses they’d done (all in the UK) and I told them about some of the courses I’d done (aboard as well as the UK) it was so lovely just to chat to someone I’d never met before about something we both clearly loved! parkrun is so good at bringing like minded people together. I followed them on social media so I can keep up with their tourism adventures.

Do you ever chat to tourists at parkrun?

How many different parkrun courses have you attended?

On the Wednesday before parkrun, they sent out an email with a section from Vitality asking people to do an extra 20% at parkrun and use the hashtag #move20more. Rachel asked me if I was game and I told her I definitely was.

On Saturday morning I met up with both Maria and Rachel and we all ran together. To start with I was a bit grumpy because the temperature was so warm and it’s meant to be cooling off because we’re halfway through September! But as we ran along I soon got over it…although I did moan about being hot haha.

I managed to run the whole 5km again which really pleased me. There was very little breeze so I definitely felt like I struggled the more we progressed. Mile 3 was my slowest at 13:06 but I averaged a pace of 12:51 throughout.

As we passed through the finish funnel we took a token and then Rachel and I quickly said goodbye to Maria and ran on. We were going to do an extra 1km but as we ran I actually felt a bit stronger than I was expecting so we topped it up to 4 miles. I was really pleased, as it’s been a good while since I ran 4 miles. In fact, it was June that I last ran 4 miles! Wow! At the end, I actually didn’t feel like I’d run 4 miles. I expected to be fatigued, but seemed to have got a 2nd wind of energy after we passed through the finish funnel. Again, I wonder how much of this new found strength is down to the workouts I’ve been doing.

Rachel and I then walked back to the barcode scanners and had a chat with various friends. We then went and had a coffee at Leon’s on the seafront. Thankfully it was bug free today! We sat outside and the views over to the Isle of Wight were incredible. We’re so lucky to live here.

Did you take part in the #move20more?

On Saturday 7th September I’d arranged to run at parkrun with Rachel. After meeting with Rachel the other day (In this post) We both signed up to Beachbody and agreed to do 100 days of Happiness with each other, documenting our progress on Instagram. Saturday was our first day to get together to have a bit of a chat about how it’s been.

We started off chatting to various people. Rachel and I know so many people at parkrun now. Once we set off we were chatting about the programmes we are following. I’m following the Transform: 20 program and Rachel is doing one called Liift 4.

Because we were chatting the time passed by really easily. I was finally able to run the whole thing again after my injury. It really helped having someone to talk to the whole way, my mind being focussed on something else and luckily the weather was cooler too.

I felt so accomplished by the end and wondered if my daily workouts that I’m following had anything to do with it too? I don’t know if a week is enough to make a difference but hopefully it will over time.

Do you cross train to compliment your running?