Park Run!

Hello blog readers.

So yesterday I went to Bromley parkrun at Norman Park.  I was driver for the day and I picked up NaggyNeighbour, Tracy and Ade!  After parking up, we walked over to the beginning of the run, we met up with LittleJ, Carole and Michael.  There were loads of others there too.  It's a very popular parkrun.  Some of our usual PWR Bromley parkrunners were touring.

Ade was going to be running along with Tracy as K wasn't running, but LittleJ was and Auriol was going to!  So after we started our run Ade crept up to me, he said the Tracy had company so he though he would leave her to it.  So me and Ade made our way around the park.

Ade hasn't been running for quite a while, he didn't know how he was going to do, I didn't either.  I do remember that just after a few weeks of running Ade really started to run well, but then he gave up running again.  So now he's back.  He wants to start running and he is running next to me!  Well, that's ok, I do love to encourage people. We ran the first half mile and we were chatting away.  It was tough, but Ade kept going, which meant that I kept going to!  I can't be falling behind, can I, after all, I've been running for blimmin ages!  We were nearly at a mile, "I need to stop" said Ade. "Let's just get to a mile first" I said, then we can have a walk.  So we kept going for a mile, and then just a little further, as Ade wanted to get to a certain sport along the long straight.  We then could take a little breather and walk for a bit.  I chose another tree as a target to get to so that we can start our running again, just a couple of feet ahead of us.

We ran all the way down the long straight and got back to the start again.  The faster parkrunners were all passing us but we still had one more lap and a quarter to do.  There were sometimes that I really wanted to stop and have a walk but because Ade was running well I didn't want to discourage that so I just plodded along chatting and trying to stop thinking about walking!  But when he said that he wanted to walk, sometimes we did just stop, but most times I found a tree to run to or a bench, or the building.  Anything really, just to get a little more running done.  That last quarter of a lap is from the start line to the funnel.  "Come on Ade, just this last little bit to do"  When we saw the 'Last lap' sign I wanted to see what I had left in my legs, "Sprint finish" I said to him, and I started to run towards the funnel.  Ade was behind me, he was sprinting, so I hadn't totally wore him out! When you get to the end of a run and find there is nothing left is when you know you can't sprint!  I was feeling a little sick after my sprint, and just had to take a moment to recover.  We went over and grabbed some water.  That hit the spot. Then we walked back to the funnel to cheer in Tracy, LittleJ and Auriol!

A lovely morning, running with some lovely friends.  I do love a parkrun!

Geeky stats, my parkrun time, however was slightly quicker, 39:57, so just a tad quicker, but I am pleased it's under that 40!