The caption read: “12th March 2017 – 8k accomplished,”OX5 ” run in two weeks…bring it on!”
About five and a half years’ ago I did my first parkrun (a distance of 5k to the uninitiated). Just 18 months or so later, I took part in my first public running event, which was a staggering (not literally) 3k further than parkrun. (“OX5” is a 5 mile run, or 8k in Euro currency, around the grounds of Blenheim Palace in the Oxfordshire town of Woodstock). For me, that extra 3k was quite an achievement for someone who, before 2015, had not ran any appreciable distance since leaving school.
Just one year ago, and with several 10k events by then already under my belt, I was setting my sights on my first half-marathon. And so it was, on 16th March last year, that I had managed to run, a ”ground-breaking” 16K.
That seems a long time ago, what with everything that has happened in the world between then and now. However, thanks to the inspiring core team at Tring (not)parkrun and the rest of the Tring (not)parkrun community, I have just about been able to maintain my running mojo; but 10k seems to have become my glass ceiling. The name of the path upon which I ran that 16k last year was the Phoenix Trail. How apt then, that last week, I ran a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes run of 11k. So, referring back to my blog last week, this is the inspiration for my countdown-to-parkrun-reboot challenge: regain a running distance of 16k before parkrun restarts in June. Wish me luck and a fair wind!
Speaking of challenges, this week’s challenge from Tring (not)parkrun was as follows:
Hello again. Amazingly we have reached the full year of virtual running with Tring parkrun #52. Treat yourself to some virtual cake! Apparently, it has less calories than the cake that we usually share in Tring Park!
I guess 52 weeks of Virtual running would be something that Mr Birthday from the children’s Mr Men series would have been proud of. In fact, whilst looking into Mr Birthday I was surprised to see that there are as many as 51 Mr Men in the series plus 40 in the parallel Little Miss Series. Rather disappointingly Mr Birthday was the 48th in the series rather than a more appropriate 52nd! Personally, I’ve always thought they could add a story about a rubbish penalty taker “Mr Goal” or “Mr Bus” who was hopeless with his punctuality!
So for this week’s photo theme we have – “Mr Men and Little Miss Characters”
See you all next week. Till then, stay safe…stay running…support the NHS.
Running Commentary 
Aw, that’s a lovely post – and you make wonderful living incarnations of the Mr Men and Little Miss characters. Hope you enjoyed the virtual cake, personally I’m not entirely convinced it packs the same punch as actual cake, but the time for cake consumption at parkfaffs worldwide will come around again soon. Well done for keeping on running! Lx
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Thanks Lucy…Might the author of runningscared be inspired to pen a few blog lines in the coming weeks? It seems to me that there’s much to reflect upon, as normality breaks out. Some will grasp it with both hands, whilst others will be not so confident when parkrun restarts. I hope that our parkrun communites will be able to reachout to both camps.
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