Yesterday I had planned to attend Park Run at Killerton, but the thunder and driving rain at 7.30 kept me firmly and cosily in bed. It wasn't that I am just a fairweather runner, of course, but I have decided that I can only fit one Park Run per month into my running schedule and the day before I had received the Park Run newsletter, telling me that next weekend is Park Run's ninth birthday. This is what it says...
“On the first Saturday of October 2004 13 parkrun pioneers came together for a free, weekly (can you say that about the first one?), timed, 5km (actually it was about 50 metres short back then) run. Who would have thought that just under nine years later over 400,000 different people would have run 10,000,000 miles at 25,000 free, weekly, timed, 5km running events across five continents!”
Now, I have only attended one Park Run but I love the ethos of this event, where a world wide community has got its act together to produce this welcoming, supportive and totally inclusive celebration of running. So I didn't go yesterday, because I definitely want to be there next week....for a party!!
If you have never been before, then I urge you to go and to become part of an international movement of people enjoying their ability to run in the open air. It is free and only requires a very simple online registration before you go. It would also be great if we all put down our club as NHS C25k, it is there on the official lists, just to shout out to the world about this brilliant scheme to get fit and active.
I know that I had said I would look out for Sallycycle at Killerton and that Cloudchaser was probably going to be there, but, ok, I wimped out and missed out on meeting my fellow C25k travellers. However, I do hereby solemnly declare, that I will attend Killerton Park Run, on Saturday 5th October, come rain or shine, for better or for worse and I will loiter outside the tearooms afterwards in the hope of meeting any of you who might make it to the party.
Now, it only takes one other C25ker from each ParkRun event to make a similar statement of intent and we have the beginnings of a nationwide (worldwide?) social, sub event.
Maybe we could all do the conga............
I did run, eventually, yesterday, after the rain had stopped. Yeah, SOFTY, I know. My aim was a slow distance extending run, so I set a 12k+ route taking in some hills and footpaths that I had not previously run. Starting at 4.30 in the afternoon just does not feel right. It wasn't too warm in Devon yesterday but the humidity was high and I decided almost straight away to ditch the 1.5 k loop at the start, because I was a wimp....no other explanation.
The first new challenge was Posbury Hill. This is a rise of 94m over 1.8k with a little levelling off in the middle. I have walked it before and thought it was long and steep, but by keeping pace down, so that breathing was easy, but also shortening stride, to try to maintain cadence, I made it to the top. Smiling all the way. As I looked out across the red ploughed fields, to the mist lifting gently out of the sodden trees, in the copse at the summit, I thought that I would never have bothered to go for a walk, at 4.30 on a day that most sane people had written off as too damn wet, but here I was, enjoying my home environment like never before.
At last I am beginning to discover a slow pace, in which the running slips into the almost effortless. The times were, as expected, unspectacular, but I made it to 11k (another distance target ticked off), even ran up the hill to my finish point and thoroughly enjoyed my run. Now I may not be Kate Bush, but I can recommend Running Up That Hill.
Don't forget Park Run, next week. DA DA DA DAHH....
Park run 3 and 'Carole's hill'...
Running up that hill! 
Running up that hill...
To park run or not to park run?
