Ok, take 2! My last post seems to be lost in the ether. Why didn’t I save it? 😩
Anyway ........
Dexy5 flagged this event up a while ago and I initially dismissed it as being too far away - Bristol to Surrey for a 5k? Well that thought lasted all of a nanosecond - I’ve clocked up many a mile on the UK’s motorways to meet up with my beloved VRB’s at different far flung Parkruns, so why should this be any different? I immediately signed up! 👍
The frenzy of excitement this week has been off the scale. Dexy, UpTheStanley and our official, very efficient, spectator, Oldgirlruns all had to take lateral flow tests yesterday, get a negative result (phew), take a PCR test this morning and post it off, then we’ll do another on Thursday. No social distancing for our race either, although the pilot did include an earlier race in the day that was.
So I found myself happily cruising along the M4 this morning with those wonderful race day butterflies of excitement and anticipation! I arrived at 10:45, got ushered through by the very cheery marshals who reminded me of the gamesmakers at London 2012, and I very quickly found my chums clad in their apricot PR teeshirts - OGR in her purple volunteer one. ❤️ There were lots of PR representatives actually.
We snaked through to the start. Mr Speedy was in Pen 2 and we cheered him as he ran by. Dexy and I were in Pen 4 and we ran the first 2.5k together. I flew off the starting blocks too fast for my little pins and I couldn’t sustain that warp (for me!) speed for the full 5k. Even so I came in at 33:41 which is only my 4th time under 34 minutes and my 2nd fastest 5k ever. I also got a PB for 2 miles on Strava! Yesss. 👊 As we were chip timed to make it official, and there was no helpful last downhill km like on the common, I’m very pleased with that time indeed! Dexy did brilliantly and UTS did too - I’ll let them post their excellent times! 💥💥
We collected our bling (one of the reasons I went!) and headed off for a picnic which sadly got curtailed by the heavens opening! Oh and I got a parking ticket 😡 - but that didn’t dampen my spirits and I drove home munching my picnic at the wheel (safely!) and singing along to the Hamilton soundtrack. What a great day, and I hope it goes some way to opening up racing and PR properly very soon. 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞
Written by
cheekychipmunks
Half Marathon
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Hello Dexy, I am just trying to cast my mind back to when I chose my running watch. It's a Garmin Forerunner 35. I know that memory is not good, but I thought I chose my watch on your recommendation. I thought yours was a 35. So have I remembered wrongly or have you bought a different watch since, as I don't seem to have the, 'Your fitness age is .... ' which is clearly very encouraging news, even if rather hard to believe. I do have VO2 max. Trust all is well with you and UTS. 😊🏃♀️🏃🏻♂️
Yes mine is a 35 over61. This is the strange thing - the message isn’t always there. It disappeared for a long time. Maybe it only only comes up on the 35 when it gets to a certain point. Have you found the same screen with the circle on it?
All is well with us thank you, we’re both double jabbed now, which is reassuring. I hope life is good in your world.
Thank you for your reply. How interesting that it appears sometimes. Yes I have the VO2 max circle and the you are in the certain % for you age and gender, but I have never to my knowledge seen the your fitness age is. Yes, we are double vaccinated too. My husband does suffer with getting oxygen into his blood. 😞 Do you know about Sats? A measure of oxygen in your blood. His Sats were down at 86/87 this morning, not good. People used to be admitted to hospital at 90/91. My husband is called a management challenge, the medical folk don't know how to help him. A certain type of steroids help, but they are not good in the long term. I was doing fine but then had my first migraine in an absolute age. Glad to be up and about now and able to keep food down again. Was up to 5.5km, but may have to drop down again. Also swelling on my left achilles! Oh dear! After all my knee trouble I seem more pleased than ever to be running. 😊🏃🏻♀️ A friend of mine age 66 has just been in her first post covid restriction race. She's in Norfolk and 66 years old. Her time 52mins 20!!!! She says that she wasn't the quickest in her age group there are apparently some excellent older runners. I shall be happy to just improve my stamina and hopefully see my heart rate come down. My friend is due to run her first marathon on May 31st.
Hi over61andstilltrying just butting in to say you should be able to see your fitness age on Garmin Connect on your phone. Find your stats section and it’ll be under the VO2Max section. 😀
Keep on feeling better. Sounds like you’ve had quite the time of it. ☹️
Thank you for butting in! In the nicest possible way. I didn't add Garmin Connect onto my phone, only onto my computer, may look at that. Which running watch do you have cheeky?
It should still work as long as it’s synced to your watch over61. 😀
I’m currently using my husband’s Vivoactive 3 as I like lots of its features, but it’s driving me a bit bonkers with appalling battery life and dodgy HR readings (I’m a reptile with a very low HR so I know that max of 187 would have made me keel over this morning! 😅). I’ll probably revert to my trusty Forerunner 235. 🥰
That sounds like a great event Cheekychipmunks and who doesn’t like a bit of bling?🏅🙂 I think you deserve a medal just for driving from Bristol to Surrey!
It seems to have been well organised from posts I’ve seen on Facebook and Strava, so credit to the organisers and participants for making it a success!🏃♂️🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♂️👍
Let’s hope it helps sway the doubters and they get behind Parkrun and other events soon! 😊🤞
Thanks David! I actually enjoy driving so it’s no hardship for me to hop in the car. My record distance was Lyme Park PR in Cheshire, although I did stay in a Holiday Inn on the Friday to avoid leaving home at 4am (but I would have if necessary!) 😅
A not entirely flattering photo of OGR but I was glad of my winter coat while you 3 were doing your bit for the future mass participation events! Sadly I think the weather may have put off quite a lot of spectators as we were thin on the ground but it was fun to be amongst a crowd of happy people again wasn’t it! My binoculars were useful picking out you and Dexy - the parkrun apricot shirts helped and I recognised UTS by the way he runs (😳)! Shame our picnic was spoilt by the rain and a parking enforcement officer but I’m very happy with all your times and mine! I thoroughly enjoyed my official spectator role and it was wonderful to see you again!
Official spectator, well done to you Oldgirlruns, you were just as important as the runners by being a spectator, I am sure you had a wonderful time, apart from the rain.
It was so good to see you OGR, and you were invaluable! Hopefully you’ll be up for running PR when it opens. Tell your hip I said so!
Pesky traffic warden. Don’t worry, I’m going to appeal. What a ridiculous situation. I’ll plead ignorance due to being a West Country gal unaware of Sunbury’s daft rule!
Apart from the rain and that parking ticket you all had a wonderful day, it is a long distance for a 5K but it was lovely meeting with your beloved VRB's, I like that photograph of all of you, once again congratulations on completing that 5K pilot event at Kempton Park.
Thanks Al! I’m happy driving to meet my VRBs, and today was no exception! We were lucky in that the running conditions were pretty much perfect; just a light drizzle for some of the run. The rain saved itself for our picnic! 🙄 As for the parking ticket, I haven’t finished with that just yet .......
Sounds like a fantastic experience Cheeky - apart from the parking ticket!🙁
Congratulations on your 2nd fastest PB - the atmosphere obviously did the trick! As you say, fingers crossed that this event continues to build up the evidence for parkrun's safe return.😀
Thanks Jonathan! The atmosphere definitely helped and I got a bit carried away at the start! There’s unfinished business with the parking ticket, believe me. 😠😅
Well done cheekychipmunks ! I have been looking out for these posts as I was initially tempted to do this race as well. Hand on heart, I didn’t feel quite ready and decided no big races for me until I’m double jabbed!💉💉😀
Such a great initiative though and I’m sure this was actually a very safe way to run, with all the testing. It’s great to see these pilot events paving the way for a safe return to mass participation events (although looking at the news, just when this will happen properly seems to be uncertain again). Thank you for being part of it and I’m glad you all had a great day...fab time too!👍🙂
I’m the same way with indoor activities Sandraj39 . Lots of my friends are busy booking cinema tickets etc, but I don’t fancy that until I’ve had my 2nd jab at the very earliest. But yesterday was as watertight as it could have been I think. We all had to test negative or we couldn’t run, plus with the 2 PCR tests too, hopefully it’ll show that over 1,000 runners plus spectators don’t pose much risk. I really hope so anyway, it was such a wonderful day. 🥰
Really glad to hear it went to plan and you all made it safely there and back. Sounds like a day to remember for many years. Well done to you all! 👍👏👏👏
Thanks Brian, yes, a day to remember indeed. The atmosphere was buzzing with positivity (not from the virus! 😅) and it was our absolute pleasure to be guinea pigs. Definitely worth the drive. 😀
How lovely to run with you again cheeky, and you’ve definitely got faster since we last did a parkrun together.
It was such a happy, smiley day wasn’t it? I still haven’t stopped grinning. And being close to other runners felt ok, which surprised me after what we’ve been through all this time.
As Cheeky said we should, and Dexy5 didn't, I duly report our times to the waiting world as 23'52" for me (first sub-24 since New Years Day 2020 ) and 32'08" for her (2nd fastest since lockdown, with the fastest downwind in a gale). Happy days! Not least for soaking up some of CC's spare bubbling excitement, even if it did make me start off stupidly quickly (paid for in my splits ).
Yep, positive splits for me as well! I think we were all so excited to be set free that we got carried away. Never mind, I’m sure we were all thrilled with our times nonetheless. 💥 Brilliant day! 👏👏👏
You are all part of running history now Munks! It must have been a fabulously special atmosphere, well done everyone 👍🏅
And more bling! - Forget the other thing, that’s totally irrelevant in the big scheme - I mean didn’t the traffic warden know you were doing your bit for the country’s recovery…. 🤔☹️
Thanks IP, it was very special, and yes, of course there was more bling for my ever growing display! 😍🥰
The warden I’m afraid was a bit of a jobsworth, even though Dexy, UTS and OGR were all in my corner. It wasn’t at Kempton Park, but where we went for our picnic after. You got an hour’s free parking, but in small print it said you still needed to display a “free” ticket. Load of tosh! I shall be appealing! 😅
I had one of those once too and appealed it but they didn’t budge ☹️ I do think it’s very underhand, especially for older people like me who can’t read the small print 😂
Waaaa, really? Oh well I’ll still try. I’m going to send photographic evidence of where I was prior to arriving there. Not sure it’ll work, but it’s worth a shot. 🤷♀️
Post note: appeal didn’t work ☹️ . The system is quite a cash cow for the council seeing how many tickets were given and I think it is very underhand. I have never seen such a weird parking system but we will recognise it next time.
I know Dexy! I was furious when it happened to me, especially when I sort of recall that a car park attendant was sitting in a car watching me the whole time and knew I didn’t get a ticket 🤬
Well done Cheeky and your running pals. Also, your all important Spectator must have done her job well, as you've achieved a result to be proud of.I'm going to do a local 5k park run when it returns and if that goes OK for me, I'll venture out to other runs - I'd love to run a racecourse even if I am more of a nag than a filly!
Hopefully, you will all stay fit and well and enjoy many more great runs.
Thanks Raisemeup. 😀 Oh you’re sure to love Parkrun. It’s the most positive experience, everyone is friendly and encouraging and all abilities are made 100% welcome. I’m lucky in that I have around 6 local to me, plus of course I love partaking in tourism and meeting up with VRB’s. Here’s hoping it can start up again on the 5th, or as soon as possible afterwards. 🤞
We were happy not to be running on the actual racecourse yesterday. The going was definitely “heavy”! 🥵
It’s so nice to see a proper group photo again cheeky. And some bling to be really, really proud of - being part of the return. I was laying in bed this morning staring at our medal hanger and the only bling on it that wasn’t virtual were my Flora Light 5k medals from 20 years ago. That definitely needs resolving.
Well done on your fab time too! Does really make a difference running with others 👏👏👏
It was amazing TC. Not long until Cheltenham (I’m turning into a racehorse with all these racecourse runs!) and I know we’ll have fun there. 👏👏
What, you don’t have any recent real life bling? Oh yes, that definitely needs resolving. Cheltenham for starters! I just counted and there are 7 real and 8 virtual medals on my hanger. I only have virtual HM ones though, and that needs sorting out this year. 😀
We have pre-COVID bling on the downstairs loo hanger but all the recent stuff (apart from the ancient Flora that I dug out the back of a drawer) is on our new fancy one, so no, no non virtual on that one. I only have virtual HMs too. Soon though 👍BTW Warwick parkrun is on a racecourse...just saying 😉
Here’s ours, it’s a bit of both of ours but also our Green Man festival lanyards are in the middle of it. I expect they will get pushed out eventually. Just the green one is a ‘real’ run. Some look mightily similar to your 😁
What a lovely photo and what a superb day! Brilliant! (Except for the parking ticket, boo! to that) So speedy too and how lovely to have the fitness of a 20 year old! Whoopee to that!👏🎉🏃♀️😊🏅
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) and 32'08" for her (2nd fastest since lockdown, with the fastest downwind in a gale). Happy days! Not least for soaking up some of CC's spare bubbling excitement, even if it did make me start off stupidly quickly (paid for in my splits 
).
5K or not to 5K thats the question
5k at last!!
10k but no bling 🏃🏼♀️