I’d had some vague thoughts about parkrun this morning but last night, I just couldn’t face setting the alarm for something beginning with a seven. MrU had been making noises about going for a comeback run so instead, we decided to go for a super steady jog along our local lane and I’d do some sort of extension afterwards. I got breakfast in bed as an advance thanks for being his run coach which was a great reward!
Mid morning, we set off. The fog that’s been hanging around the village had finally lifted and as we got past the houses and on to the path through the fields, we saw a massive buzzard circling. There were also a couple of bunnies out. I hope they found cover! It was a bit of a novelty to be having an actual conversation to check my breathing instead of pretending to talk on the phone. MrU has speedy speedster tendencies so I did a good job of keeping us both at snail pace. The lane hit a little group of houses and turned sharply uphill. By this time, we’d warmed up and it felt like a fun little challenge rather than a hideous climb so it was up to the post box and time to head back. As we ran along, the leaves were falling off the trees and little birds were flying into the hedgerows. Back at the start, 3km covered, MrU headed home very pleased with himself and I loaded up my new run partners-Coach Bennett and Danny Howard’s Dance Party!
I was in an awkward position in relation to my usual routes. There was nothing for it but to head back along the lane. That was pretty demoralising and although I knew I wasn’t tired, my legs felt heavy. Definitely psychological! Once I was able to divert on to another hill, even though I was going upwards, because I was on new territory I got a second wind! I also spotted some exciting looking mushrooms and stopped to take a picture. By this point, I was about 5k done and itching to have a bit of a pick up. I started again and once I hit the top of the hill, the legs said GO so I did! Not ridiculously but enough to feel like I was pushing a bit. At one point, I caught sight of myself in a mirror tractors use when turning out of a farmyard and was pleased to see that I looked like a real runner! Ridiculous-I’ve been running for nearly a year but sometimes out brains are slow to catch up to what we can do! At the bottom of the hill, I stopped at 7km and found I’d set a new PR for 1km on the Nike app. What a nice surprise. A slow walk back and some stretches. Not a bad start to Saturday!
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
