I know, I know, I know…..It has been far too long again!! I really need to get better at this blogging lark.
So, what has been happening since the last update?
Well there has been a couple of additions to the wall of bling! The running club put on a bus to travel down to the Milton Keynes Festival of Running on the 5th March. There was a variety of distances to select from – 5k, 10k, Half Marathon and Full Marathon. Each distance was represented by at least one person from the club. I opted for the 10k distance as i had a half marathon already planned for the following weekend (more on that later). It had rained fairly hard the night before and we were warned of some standing water on the route. This standing water turned out to be mid-calf deep at about mile 2, meaning 4.22 miles with squelchy, wet trainers! After that delightful surprise all was fairly uneventful until the very end when they whacked in a cracking great hill right before the end, thanks! Managed to keep enough in the tank for the sprint finish though 🙂
On the 12th I travelled to Wembley stadium to take part in the Vitality North London Half Marathon. This was a compensation place offered after a bit o a cock up at the Cheltenham Half Marathon in September 2016. It is a well organised race that starts outside Wembley, travels down to Allianz Stadium (a proper stadium where they play a proper game haha), and then back up to Wembley where you run the last bit in the actual stadium itself. The atmosphere along the course was great with quite a few families standing outside cheering everyone on but what i really enjoyed was the different types of music played at various points. There were, steele bands and jazz bands but the ones that got me moving most were the Dhol bands….I even asked one of them to follow me for the rest of the run as I found it a great beat to run to, sadly they declined. For those who don’t know what a Dhol is (I had to google it just now!), it is a double sided barrel drum played in one form or another throughout the Indian sub-continent. So now you know!
Since then it has been pretty quiet as I flew to Florida for a family holiday on the 16th and got back at the end of March. Of course I packed my running stuff, including my parkrun apricot vest. I knew there was a parkun not far from where we were staying and I had persuaded my dad to take me there for the first Saturday! due to the heat and humidity they start a bit earlier, at 7:30 which meant a nice 6:30 start on the first weekend we were there (and the 2nd as it happened, we were planning to run a local colour run but the entry fee was a bit spendy!!). The course is set on Clermont Water, a large lake set in a lovely historic village. I left dad with the camera as my nephew and i lined up for the start. considering Worcester regularly has 500+ runners these days the field was fairly small. My nephew dashed off ahead of me and I settled in to a plod. I played cat and mouse with a few people before the jet lag hit and I had to walk. In the end i did it in 42:00….my nephew got his best parkrun time to date which he was pleased about!
So, back home and I opened up my registration pack from the Virgin Money London Marathon!!! It’s this month people……this month!!! One more long run planned in and then it is time for the taper! It’s all getting real now!
Bringing Up The Rear 