It's all about the bike

Since I last wrote, my weekends have been dominated by the bike. My sister had signed herself, her boyfriend and me up for a 45 mile charity ride in Kent the first weekend of May. The lovely fiancee was invited too, but there was the small problem that he didn't own a bike. Or at least not for long…

Spring is here...

I know Spring is here. There's a couple of tell-tale signs…

1). The sun. It's back, and glorious.

2). The spring flowers are coming, and they're also glorious.

3). I get inexplicably faster at parkrun.

Spring is here!

Spring is here! Life is skittles and life is beer! I think the loveliest time if the year is the spring, I do. Don't you? Course you do! (Bonus points for recognising the song).

Today (actually, it's taken me ages to post this, and 'today' is now 'last Saturday') was an utterly perfect spring day. The sun shone, the flowers were out, the leaves are just starting to appear on trees and everything seems right in the world. Spring is my most favourite month; no other makes you feel so glad to be alive. And unlike summer which can only disappoint, spring can never let you down when so much loveliness is bursting forth after winter, and every sunny day feels like a blessing. Ahh, spring.

Valentine tourism

So, I'm a bit slow writing this post up, but better late than never...

Last Friday was Valentine's Day, as I'm sure you noticed. You probably noticed even if you were trying very hard not to.
I took it as an excuse to get my quilling paper out and see if I could have a bit more success than my rubbish attempts at snowflakes over christmas. Turns out hearts are really easy to do!

Runner's Highs

I've had two moments this week where I've thought 'hey, this running thing is awesome'.
1) On Saturday my boyfriend and I dragged ourselves out of bed into a dark and cloudy morning, fully expecting the weather for our parkrun to be a bit miserable. But we were going anyway, because we're runners. It seemed the weather gods rewarded our running faithfulness, because on the tube/train to Hampton Court, the clouds parted, the sun came out, and a glorious morning was born. By the time we started running it was a perfect autumn morning.

I was just planning to run solidly well. At 4km I thought a PB was out of reach - I'd have to run a really solid last 1km. But rounding towards the last long straight I felt good. I overtook the woman I'd used as my pacer. I kept going until a lady in front turned around and said "I can hear you catching me. I'm going to run faster, see if you can keep up!" and so I tried. She dragged me around the final corner and onto the final straight. There I lost her, but realised that this 11th hour sprint might bring me the PB after all. I finished in 26:46, knocking 14secs off my best. All I wanted to do was thank this wonderful woman, but I lost her in the crowds. For the rest of the day the combination of the unexpected sunshine, unexpected kindness and unexpected new PB kept me bouncing along with a smile on my face.

2) I decided I might as well start training for this half marathon - first goal being to start running 3x a week. So today I ran home from uni (11km from central London along the Thames Path). A few km in when I was still enjoying the novelty of it all I turned and saw something that instantly cheered me. Made me feel glad that I was right there at that moment with the time to enjoy what was around me. I love how running puts you back in touch with your surroundings. This was the view that made me feel alive and privileged and glad to live in such an awesome city;

I'd love to hear about any running moments that have lifted your mood this week :)

Parkrun

On Saturday I finished my 7th Parkrun. For people familiar with Parkrun this probably doesn't sound very exciting - after all there's the 250 club for those who have completed over 250 parkruns! For those not so familiar I'll give a brief summary. Parkruns are timed 5km runs that take place in parks around the UK and is spreading around the world, managed by volunteers and free for everyone to take part. All you need is to register for your free account where you can see all your results and print your barcode, and then take that barcode
with you when you run.
I started going along because my boyfriend has been going for a few years. He earned his 50 shirt earlier this year and now wears it with great pride each week. We run at Bushy Park by Hampton Court Palace in west London, which aside from being a glorious place to run, happens to be where Parkrun all started. As such it's hugely popular - over 960 runners this week. I find this brilliant; there are the really serious athletes (they get a few international level runners) all the way down to families running with their dog. Running in such a large group does slightly magical things to your times...they're much much faster! Before my first Parkrun (when I was really aiming for 30mins) the best I could manage was just over 32 minutes. On the day I ran 28:38 and finished with a huge smile. I was on such a high for the rest of the day. And I was hooked.

This week, after sitting admiring the view, I was pretty determined to set a new PB. I went armed with my Nike + running app, and my wrist stopwatch. But here's the downside to running with all the lovely people; it takes a while to get across the start line, and there's a bit of weaving along the way. Result being, the watch starts before you actually start running and you end up running a bit further. I was happy because according to my GPS data I ran at the pace I was aiming for and my Nike app thought I'd run my quickest 5km, but my watch showed that I'd missed out by about 10 seconds. But the best thing about Parkrun? There's always next week...

And the coming Saturday (5th October) is Parkrun's 9th anniversary. If you've never been I'd really recommend finding your local one and turning out on what's sure to be a bumper week. Unfortunately I have other plans for the morning (involving running) that I'll chat about later...