Saturday 20 August 2016

New Twists

It's been a while since my last update, and I've been keeping up with myself. Shortly after my last post I did the fun run in my home town for the third time. It's not often you get "fun runs" of 8.5 miles, but I keep entering this one because of the lovely atmosphere. This year I dressed up as Super Girl which got lots of encouraging cheering from young children. I was struggling for training time for long runs, so was hoping to come in close to my previous time at best. I was thrilled to be within a minute of it between the lack of training and the sun coming out just as the race started. I wasn't the only one finding the heat of the sun tough; it turned out that I had a higher placing despite the slight dip in time.

Reports season came along, but at that time I ended up doing a new event- new to me and the city. The idea of the Run 5:30 series is to encourage early starts to make time for running, and I was very happy to make time to earn a medal before work! The city at sunrise was a lovely experience. The roads were quiet enough not to need closing, and I made it back home in good time to prepare for work. Naturally, I wore my medal all day, dropping unsubtle hints about how fantastic I am incase my year 7s and 9s were in any doubt!

I've signed up for a repeat of the local autumn half marathon that was launched last year. Now the holidays are upon us, training is in progress. I'm feeling a bit maverick about training this time and have got a lovely cross country long run route which I walked and ran on my first go of the holidays and have reapeated and extended since, naturally decreasing the walking and increasing the running.

This evening I've signed up for something different at short notice. It's a smaller event run by a local club with a 5 mile loop, and the option to "double or quit". I'm hoping to double. I've run/ walked 8.5 miles nearby on my recent long runs which is decent preparation. The race itself is good training for the HM.

At present, I'm happy that I've kept the core of events that's worked for me previously, and found some new ones that fit in around them and compliment them.

There's only one piece of bad news. Worse than the mild sprained ankle which has been peacefully tolerant of my running... I have been utterly trounced at Junior Parkrun. By a 5 year old. Now in my defence, I did have a 3 year old harnessed to my back, and I did have pulled calves following a barefoot run on holiday a few days before, but the fact remains that my 5 year old shot off so quickly and got so far from me that I had to cut off quarter of the course to be able to give him his bar code and watch him finish. He knocked 5 minutes off last summer's time completing 2k in 15 minutes, a very respectable pace by most standards! He was thrilled not to have the tail runner for company for the first time. Something on my agenda is finding an event for him so that he can win his own medal. I'm glad he likes running, both for his fitness, but also as a starting point for many other sports.

So I shall sign off here so I can get a run in the morning. I need to keep up my training to avoid future humiliation from my own 5 year old!

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