Happy New Year to all 🎉🥂Really enjoying reading about everyone’s end of/start of year runs , especially if you’ve grabbed a graduation badge or Pb , as many of you have 😊 Well done 🥳🎉🏃🏻♀️
I couldn’t decide yesterday whether to make my run ( wk 1 magic plan 5K distance run ) a 2020 run or leave it for 2021 🤷🏼♀️🤔 .
On balance ‘New beginnings ‘ are more my thing than ‘Endings’ or ‘Last of’ so I chose my run to be a ‘The First of ‘ 😂😂
No offence 2020, but I’d rather give 2021 my run 😂🙄 and as much as I’m quite a reflective person , I’ve done enough of that in 2020 too. It’s the time of year for it of course , if only to inform how you’re going to approach the new year, and surely 2020 has informed us most adequately 🙁🙄
I am fortunate, I have enough and I’m grateful for it . My key word for 2021 will be ‘Simplify’
All of the above apply to running too 🏃🏻♀️😂👍
Every now and again I make things complicated for myself 🤷🏼♀️😂 so last night I decided I was getting back to ‘simples’ 🦦( sadly lacking in the emoji department , no meerkats 😂)
So I was going to run , I was going to get up early so I could run at my favourite time and my only requirement would be to run SLOWLY for 5KM.
And I did.
Lovely enjoyable run , kept it close to home , had an idea what a 4K loop might be and adapted to get to 5 . Landing 2 mins from home .
I underestimated the ice ( don’t know why 🤷🏼♀️ It’s been 🥶❄️🥶 for days)
Clearly because I had decided to run there would be none of course ! 😂🤣🙄
I was going to do a loop starting from my house , up towards the village and then head down to coast road , golf course and back . I knew I might need to do some ad hoc ‘adding on’ to make 5 K though. I set off and quickly realised how slippy it was so that slowed my pace very nicely for first 1K.
I decided to make my first ‘add on ‘ by going further up the road and joining the village High St . It was deserted ( apart from a small queue forming at the local Co op 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️) and it less frosty than some of the exposed pavements , what a treat to be ‘running down the High St’ 😂🏃🏻♀️😂
It’s a lovely old village so the pavements are half the size of ‘modern’ ones , I passed the butcher, the two bakers , no candlestickmakers but a post office, chemist , cafe, deli , chip shop, podiatrist, osteopath and silversmiths. 🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️ This list, apart from location is why we retired here 😂😂 we have a Doctors and vets too so we’re sorted 👌
At the end of the High St I turned down a little road that would after 1 K lead to the golf course and my old familiar road to the lighthouse . I checked my watch for pace when I felt good and also when I felt things were a bit laboured . I’m really going to ensure I finally manage my pace this year and get better at knowing where I need to be and reacting when not. I only looked at my watch again when I thought I might be approaching 4Km so that I could judge where to put the last km in order to land near home .
This turned out to be about 500 m down the lighthouse road , which was fine and I doubled back to go home . It was about 9am and things were stirring , plenty of golfers popping up on the greens now and the early New Year’s Day walkers were getting out and about .
My last few runs have been at night , just the way I could fit them in but I’m glad to be back on a morning run and will try and get back to that . Much more to see and motivate . I did the whole of C25K at 6:30/7 and I do believe there’s no better hot shower after an early morning run and my cup coffee tastes better after a morning run too ....... nothing like it 👌😂
I used a playlist that I had made for my C25K wk5 R3 ( remember that one 😂) I was so organised , so much thought went into that playlist , the tempo , length of each track etc 😂😂 but it was also so motivational too .
Anyway LottieMW ‘S post yesterday when she was listening to ‘Freebird’ reminded me of all the good tracks so many of us were listing at that time
So today was
Bruce Hornsby - The Way it is
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
Eagles - Take it Easy
Elvis- Suspicious Minds
Billy Joel - Uptown Girl
Elton John - Crocodile Rock
Bruce Hornsby - End of the Innocence
All pure nostalgia and all strategically placed to get me for warm up , Run 20 etc 😂😂 Very ‘on it ‘ but it worked 😂🤷🏼♀️
So I’m going to continue with the distance plan at my Happy Pace , any more Pb’s can evolve at their own pace and I will stick with gradual and consolidation. Although I may use the 2.5 run for a bit of 1K speed as I enjoyed the speed challenge 😊
Happy Running , wherever you run and whatever you want to achieve 😊🏃🏻♀️👌
Just keep getting out 🥳
Photo,: today’s run stats , which surprised me as I thought I was struggling and slow at the end 🤷🏼♀️
and a few from where I run over the course of last few weeks
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
