Hello Everyone and happy weekend. Today is parkrun day, a free 5K event which takes place every Saturday morning all around the world. It is for everyone, slow, fast, able, disabled, big, small and everyone in between. Oh and don't forget about the super Mum's and Dad's who push their babies in buggies. You can walk, jog, run, run/walk, it's not a race, just a run in the park and loads of us here on Bridge to 10K do it religiously every Saturday morning.
Some of us may not be able to do a parkrun at the moment so until parkrun returns fully for everyone some of us will continue to take part on our own in a Virtual parkrun every Saturday morning called a (not)parkrun. Or if you are away on Holidays, prefer to run on your own, or do not have a parkrun close by you a (not)parkrun is perfect, please feel free to join in. Please post a little run report after your parkrun or (not)parkrun and let everyone know how you got on. The little run report can be done over a post parkrun coffee and treat/cake. (parkrun is all about the after run coffee and cake, and meeting friends old and new).
If you are a new graduate and would like to start, all you have to do is run, walk or jog at a parkrun or a 5K run/jog/walk (not)parkrun anytime today or tomorrow and write a little run report under this post. It's like a little community and it is good fun, sets you up nicely for the weekend. If you want to you can register on the parkrun website and you can log your 5K (not)parkrun. In fact you can log any 5K done during the week as a (not)parkrun.
For anyone whom has not done a real parkrun yet and if it is available to you, give it a try. It is the most wonderful community event. Saturday mornings will never be the same again.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you who ran in real proper parkruns and (not)parkruns. Happy running and have a lovely weekend
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damienair
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Hello everyone from beautiful New Zealand, where we arrived on Wednesday after our 3 weeks in Oz. My parkrun actually started 15 hours ago at 8.00am here and I have finally beaten RunWillie to the first reply 😂 By a remarkable coincidence our campsite was just 2 miles from University of Waikato Parkrun in Hamilton. Wonder how that happened 😈 It was a lovely spring morning, sunshine, blue sky and 14c. A small field of just 60 runners around the university grounds and lakes (1 short lap, 2 long laps and 1 medium lap). The RD was born in Worthing and the timekeeper in Southampton, so I was able to tell them I’ve done both of their hometown parkruns! A very friendly bunch of people. 89th parkrun in a rubbish time of 35.15 and I was 42/60, but who cares. It was lovely, I got a U for my alphabet and completed the World Tourist challenge 😃
Thank you 😊 Got a few more letters to go to complete the alphabet challenge (k next week 👍), but I completed World Tourist after running in 4 different countries
It was definitely worth it. Amazing how many people ask where you’re from (at which point you generally discover you’re talking to somebody who was born in Britain or whose family is/was from the UK 😂) Perfect morning for running 😊
After a 2 week break from parkrun, I returned for Clapham Common’s 200th event. My friend joined in, but his partner did the smart thing and stayed in bed 😜
There were over 900 runners despite the bitter 5°, but at least the sun was shining
Well I never!! 🤔 Every parkrun I've done I've seen the tailwalker ambling along, chatting, clapping, waving. It's apparently a very popular volunteer role so when it came up in the email asking for volunteers I just jumped at the chance. My instructions were don't overtake people, well! Overtake people? I could hardly keep up! At the turn point I was joined by a lovely young lady and her huge dog who told me how far she walks each week to marshall the turn point then how far they walk home again. We kept having to run a bit to keep up, it was very enjoyable and I finished in 55 minutes. Oh I did lots of the waving, clapping and chatting too but not the ambling .
What a beautiful morning too. Enjoy your weekend Damienair and all
Well done Sue! I had to jog 90% of the course when I did my one and only tailwalking role! Just depends on the circumstances why the person is towards the back. My fellow was clearly a finely tuned athlete coming back from injury, with his son mostly in a buggy. His walk was very quick indeed! 😅
Glad you had a good time though, and you got a workout! 💪
You never know whether you will need to run or walk, especially someone drops out. I once did a slow walk of the first lap followed by a fast run of a mile to catch the next person!
Well done Sue, fellow tailwalker, I was also tailwalker at parkrun this morning, you did mention earlier in the week that you would be tailwalker at parkrun this Saturday, I am glad that you enjoyed it✔️✔️👍
Well I do a lot of walking as well as running Sue, I am a a member of our local Thursday morning walking group, it's a 4K walk, after the walk the group meet in the cafe of the local leasure centre and have coffee and cake, during the winter months I also go around a 12K walk, weather permitting on a Sunday morning.
In most cases Sue but not all, the tailwalker isn't far behind the last runner or walker, of the 7 times I have been the tailwalker only about two seconds has been the most I have been behind the last runner, in my case, a walker who I have spoken to while walking, however, yesterday I noticed at the other parkrun I have been the tailwalker there was a 15 minute gap between the last runner and the tailwalker, that's a bit unusual, it's a trail course, I am wondering if the tailwalker went the wrong way, the volunteers at the finishing line must have thought ".where is the tailwalker "? eventually she did appear, thank goodness. ✔️✔️✔️
Well done on your Tailwalking Sue. It’s quite tricky to get that role at ours as it always gets snapped up early. Looks a beautiful day from your photos 😍
It's tricky to get it here for the same reason, not sure I'd get quite so excited if I was lucky enough to get that role again though, it was an amazing day. Blue sky and sunshine all day
My plan this morning, continuing my recovery, was to have a couple of short walking breaks back at Portsmouth Lakeside with a beautiful sunny morning. However in the end all felt so good that I just went on.....and on, completing my first non-stop running 5k since my op 6 weeks ago and indeed since the hernia appeared back in February! It was quite crowded at the beginning - not surprising when my result(35.25) showed that there were 315 finishers, the most since before the pandemic. Feels great to be back - a bit like the end of c25k!😀
That’s the best news Jonathan! You’ve clearly been a good patient and taken it easy enough to earn that non-stop run today! Sounds like you can put that hiccup well and truly behind you now. 🙏🥰
Morning everyone! What a chilly morning it was. 🥶 3 degrees on the way to Clevedon today, but bright sunshine so I plumped for leggings and a tee shirt, knowing I’d warm up after a few minutes (I did).
Met Jenny there and she found it rather hard as she hasn’t run in 3 weeks. I’d be the same.
I found it delightful and came in 36:48 (plus I ran 0.02k after collecting my token to make up the important 5k). Pleased with that as it’s my quickest run at Clevedon for a good while. 🙏
To be fair BC it was probably more like a tropical 6 degrees when we started running! I did ponder over what to wear, but I get hot really quickly and get cross with myself when I overdress. So I listened to my inner chipmunk! 😅
Another trip to Sunny Brighton and back to Preston Park, my 3rd time there. We were meeting a work colleague of my husband who has been on a fitness drive since ill health & other personal reasons. He’s not done c25k but gone to the gym, ran a bit on the treadmill, lost a lot of weight and decided he wanted to give ParkRun a go.
He ran the first 3KM but found he had to walk/run the last couple of km’s and finished around 35 mins.
I came in at 34.39 and husband managed to break the 23 mins and came in at a very speedy 22:43 🥵.
Thanks SueAppleRun . We did Lancing last September (it was a very hot one 🥵) but hope to return at some point. Worthing is on my list to do as is Hastings. We are about an hour or so from each!
Lovely sunny chilly morning for parkrun. There were 1012 runners today at Southampton. It was a bit congested but I managed to be 9th in my age group out of 24 so I’m pleased with that. Next weekend I’ll be doing my first official half marathon on Sunday so will be walking at parkrun the day before!
We decided on somewhere less muddy today. 1st choice was Stretford but it gets large numbers and I noticed it was their 8th birthday, 2nd thought was Worsley Woods but we went to do Freedom walk on Thursday but were thwarted by a very large, deep puddle (actually overflow from a pond), then picked our way over mud to return to the car so missed a fair portion and went for lunch. That's one for another day, but it does look nice especially with the autumn colours.
So we went to Hyde again which is close to home. It was beautiful, the riverside bit was strewn with leaves but firm underfoot, we were serenaded by a guitarist playing Beatles songs and it was the noisiest parkrun I have been to! The Run Director was encouraging everyone into the finish funnel - I could hear him from the far end of the woodland stretch 😀
And as you can see, my poppy t-shirt had its annual outing. It attracted a fair few comments.
Good afternoon Damien, for parkrun #101 I took the train to Glasgow and was the tailwalker at Springburn parkrun, I was walking with a man who was a little injured and didn't want to run, it was his 270th parkrun, nevertheless our time was sub 50 minutes at 49.56 which is a reasonable walking pace of 9.59m/km
Now that I have run over 100 parkruns I will now volunteer more often, I am already booked for Palacerigg parkrun as a marshall on December 2nd and I'll ask to be marshall at Springburn parkrun for Saturday 30th December once the roster is posted on their website.
Well done AlMorr If there is a particular date and volunteer role you want to do you can email the core team of your chosen parkrun and ask to be added.
We usually plan our non-running volunteering weeks ahead so get our names down early.
Over the Christmas and New Year period we will have 4 parkruns, we already have our names down to scan barcodes on 23rd December.
For roles where we can also run (Event Set Up, First Timers briefing, Tailwalker) we wait until nearer the time, in case we go somewhere else 😀
That's what I have been doing Sue, immediately a post for a future rota for volunteers is posted on the parkrun website I e mail the RD asking for whatever volunteer role I want, I have now been tailwalker at 3 of the 4 parkruns I regularly go to, 7 times tailwalker, the next volunteer role for me will be a marshall on Saturday 2nd December.
Good afternoon Damien and all. Running carefully at Stratford today before heading off to Suffolk with Shake-and-run .
Wisdom tooth gap is still giving me gip so running has been problematic. I’m also not fuelling (i.e. eating!) well because I can only have sloppy food like soup and porridge. So today was never going to be good.
It was a gorgeous day with the first frost of the winter coating the grass. As usual my legs wanted to go much faster than the rest of me but they had very little in them after running to the park and doing the course check.
In the end I did just over 30 minutes but my legs were shot. Looking forward to a parkrun where my teeth and my marathon training are all in the past and I can go faster again! Oh yes, and a really, really big cooked breakfast with all the trimmings would be nice too 😋
I was b@@dy minded last night and had a chicken curry Sue! It was painful but I survived, there was loads and I ate it all! Fingers crossed it’s finally improving! It is really horrible though, it’s so tiring being sore all the time! x
What I didn't expect was that the local event would be cancelled due to lack of volunteers. They usually send out emails if it looks like that's going to happen, and I'd have put myself forward.
It was frosty this morning and I struggled to get the car defrosted so arrived at 8.55am and was surprised I could get a prime parking space. When I got out of the car I noticed a lady in running kit was going back to hers. I looked over to the usual start point and saw there was nobody there.
The lady wound her window down and called over that it was cancelled. I checked the website and found the reason. There was no time to divert to somewhere else, so I continued my Saturday morning routine (top up the car's tank and visit Lidl).
On getting home I had a coffee and a Lidl doughnut, had loo anxiety too many times, then got out just after midday (I'd stayed in my kit all this time) and ran a low HR circuit of 8km, with some hills, to try to mollify my watch with some low aerobic minutes. It was satisfied with that, but is instead now demanding some anaerobic workouts.
Good recovery nowster; I especially like the doughnut part 😋. Your post has made me reflect on my relationship with my watch.
I have occasionally considered parting with my faithful, but unexciting and undemanding, Garmin 35 and hooking up with a younger racier model. A bit ambitious for a 71 year old maybe. Anyway, your post has convinced me to stick with my old faithful friend. I am sure that I would quickly recycle any watch which tried to tell me what to do…..I am not just not made for ordering around. A few have tried and given up. Maybe next run do the opposite of what it demands…put it in its place, which could be the dustbin if it doesn’t behave. It doesn’t deserve you 👍
I can follow the watch's advice or I can ignore it. Most of the time I ignore it.
The reasons I got the FR955 last year included that the vivoactive3 I had didn't have the battery life to survive the longer runs I was starting to do at that point. The thought also was that if I got a newer model it was most likely to be supported for longer by the manufacturer.
I charged the watch to about 98% on Monday and did over 5 hours of activities with it before charging it from 20% to 95% on Saturday lunchtime (which took just over an hour). I've since done two activities which total just over two hours, and the watch is at 83%.
Battery life is an issue. I have to charge up more regularly these days, but my 35 is still good for a HM; which is far enough for me. My phone battery life became an issue until misswobble pointed me towards a battery case which gives me plenty of power. Maybe Santa will intervene 🙂
🙄 ….my weakness is forgetting my aftershokz. I press play after my 10 minute warm up walk and I hear a distance voice emanating from my shorts’ pocket! I did manage an easy 30 minutes with Jes yesterday. AHR of 135 and VO2 max was 38 and climbing. Sometimes less is more 🙂
Morning all, UpTheStanley and I, like RunaroundSue , wore our poppy run T-shirts at Southsea parkrun this morning but forgot to take a photo. So here we are when wearing them 5 years ago and looking younger.
It turned out to be much warmer when running than when we left the house (again) so the long sleeved underlayer was a mistake.
We are tweaking our starting routine each week, and this week I held up the sign for 30-35 minute runners and led them from the beach to the promenade. This meant I was at the front of the group so started very much faster than I usually do. In fact it was a definite case of positive splits. 6:05. 6:12, 6:31 and then realised the error of my ways and had to do a few breath catching walks 7:11, and 6:35 to finish. It just shows that running with faster people does drag you along! 33:29 recorded on Strava because I forgot my Garmin watch. 😱 33:58 parkrun time.
Thankfully I didn’t have the responsibility of pace making others; just a new way of loading runners to the start line in order to keep an even flow . It worked well.
Yes we did Tilgate, where they they have 2 start funnels that merge. Very clever. Streaming the runners was one of the proposals to convince our council that our new route would work, and we’ve been trying different ways of doing it.
Aaw thank you Jonathan 😘. I suspect that some Southsea parkrunners may be heading your way occasionally now and boosting Lakeside numbers. 359 for us today which is manageable on the new route. Our first runner came in at 14:58 which is 2nd fastest in Southsea. I’m sure on the old course he would have taken the title .
It really should have been BC, but it was breakfast, shower, then off to Crawley to watch Accrington Stanley get beaten. Getting out of the car reminded me that I really should have done some stretching. Slap wrists.
Yesterday was my 39th parkrun. I love it. I'm jogging more now, thanks to couch to 5km. I love the support of everyone. They see me jogging, and ilsome of them say, well done, keep going, good effort. Or give me a thumbs up. It really encourages me that they take a few seconds to do that
A lovely sunny but cold morning here in Staffs. Sis and I wrapped up warm and joined the other 642 participants for a run round the lake. I decided to do the same intervals which I did on Tuesday so, 10 x 2mins at 5k pace with 1 min recovery between. Most of my recovery times seemed to be on the downhills which was a bit annoying 😆 I enjoy the variation of intervals and they seem to make the distance easier. The coach finished before i did but i just carried on in the same way to the finish.No PB but got round in a couple of seconds less than usual. Sis was way ahead, but then she's 6 years younger than me and has been running for years 😂
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week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
week 2 begins! 
