Yesterday I went back for a visit to Taunton to meet up with some friends from school (a long time ago - I'll give you a clue, next year we'll be celebrating 30 years since leaving school!). Had a jolly good time in the pub(s), quaffed a bottle of red wine then got all "sensible" and went on to soft drinks (I must be growing up, at last). I got back to my hotel room at about one in the morning so it was a bit of a late night. I set my alarm with good intentions of going for a run in the morning. Strangely, I was awake at about 5.45 and couldn't get back to sleep. This was actually a Good Thing as it turned out I had set my alarm for the wrong day......
Anyway, having done two runs on holiday in Northumberland, I now wanted to run in Taunton, where I lived until about 12 years ago. I took some painkillers for my slightly sore head, treated myself to some sinus spray and Airways gum and set off at 6.45am. I got a bit confused to start with because there were roads where I didn't remember roads but I managed to find one of the parks in town, which I knew had a riverside footpath to another park so I planned to include both parks in my run. Thump, thump, thump over the wooden bridge crossing the River Tone then I followed the path to the next park. A pleasant surprise was that this park now led to a new nature reserve, and the route through the nature reserve took me past my old school. Last night we had been reminiscing about a couple of my friends and I being in the little group at the back who always walked most of the cross country runs. Now I was happy to note that my run was far longer than those little runs around the school playing fields 
It still felt like a hell of a long time between Laura telling me I'd run five minutes and then telling me I was halfway through and then another long time before she told me I had another five minutes left to go. I couldn't summon up the energy to speed up for the last minute but I did manage to not slow down and I was happy with that a is there was an upwards incline for part of that time.
I covered 2.96 miles in the 35 minutes (5 walking, 25 running, five walking). I don't know if that is good or bad ? It's quicker than my woodland run the other day, but I would expect that as there were proper tracks rather than muddy, rocky trails.
This is the route: mapmyrun.com/routes/view/83...
A bonus of my heroically early hangover run was that I was first in line for the hotel breakfast so I enjoyed a mushroom and bacon omelette and a leisurely pot of tea before loading up the car and heading for home. It put me in a good mood and I felt nicely relaxed for all of the 2 1/2 hour drive home
Week 7 complete!
Week 7 DONE ✅😱
Week 5 complete, Week 6 first run done 
Park Run - Done
