I woke up this morning not really intending to run till tomorrow ... then saw the wind seemed to have died down and the sun was struggling through and decided to run. My daughter is staying this weekend but I left her in bed under a welter of cats and found my headphones, checked they were charged this time, running gear on, shoes on, running shades on, tissues in pocket, running belt on, week 2 downloaded ready, lipgloss... what more could I need? And off I went..
Striding along smiling to myself thinking “im really feeling good this morning and it’s so peaceful this early on a Sunday morning “ I pushed the button on the side to set the counter ready, pushed the one the other side .. gps off, then gps on all ready for when the bell rings and the man says “run”.......
Ding! Run!! And off I went trotting along steadily , head up, breath easy, loving the morning, down along the lower end of the town and out towards the civic centre (5mins) then turned right along the Tarka Trail towards Braunton up to the gate and gap for runners (10mins) and headed on towards the cutoff to Pottington ( which is usually about 15 minutes). I run this route so often that I more or less know my timings but I like to ‘race’ myself now and then. Nearly there and I glanced at my watch to see how the time was going and realised I hadn’t pressed the button to start the run 😡😡😡. So I pressed it quick and when he said “now walk for one minute” it said 3:30 so I realised it hadn’t recorded 11 and a half minutes at the beginning. . I thought “ never mind I can add that on at the end and work out my time roughly”. So I finished the walk and set off again on the second 15 minutes.....running easily but the wind had got up again so I pulled my hood up over and carried on along the riverside. Can’t wait till it starts getting warmer but there are definite signs of spring, lots of blossom and buds coming out.
10 mins into that run I turned around and started back, thinking I’d end up more or less where I started but for some reason I seemed to have run further so when I got where I thought I should have 15 mins left for the last run I was still running and had 7 minutes of the second run to go so decided to carry on further along the river and see if I could beat my time for the New Bridge to Old Bridge and then work my way home from the other side of the bridge. So I finished the 2nd 15 mins, walked 1 minute, and set off for the last set of 15 minutes. And this felt like a really smooth run...breath was easy, legs were light ...I was flying. Ran under the bridge and up the other side and swung round towards home. I was thinking to myself this must be a pretty good time today and I glanced at my watch ... to see the damned hung had died!!!! I’d checked everything except my watch being charged enough 😢😭😭😭
So that was a bummer!!! Anyway I enjoyed the run and I know I ran 3 lots of 15 minutes today so who cares how fast I was or how far I went. And NEXT run on Tuesday I will make sure EVERYTHING IS CHARGED!!! 😁
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
