On the 3rd of April I got up stupidly early and decided that I would run at my 110th different parkrun location and I wanted a quick time. I caught a bus and then a train to arrive at Shoreham-by-sea for 8.21am. Plenty of time to walk to the start of the parkrun and do a quick warm up. It was a lovely surprise to bump into fellow Vegan running club members Cheryl and Telmo. They knew I was coming because I had mentioned it on one of our facebook pages. Cheryl and I couldn’t tell you which one though as we have quite a few different pages..lol.
It had just started to rain but the wind didn’t seem as bad as anticipated.
I wanted a low 18 minute time today. The course was a flat, out and back on a gravel path.
The run didn’t quite go to plan and I was struggling halfway and wheezing, my breathing was terrible. This was not my style at all. I was thinking it maybe related to covid or a virus I had a month or so back. My lungs were on fire. I didn’t even run under 19 minutes, so way off my target time. P7 with a time of 19.04. I’ll have to come back another time when my fitness returns. I am keen to do Worthing again for a quick time as well. It would also be nice to meet up with Cheryl and Tel at Seaford parkrun too at some point as they were telling me how lovely it is. We had a nice chat and coffees in the pub before I caught my train home. It was still a wonderful morning despite a disappointing time and another location ticked off.
The day after, Clare and myself decided to do a nice walk from Lyndhurst to Brockenhurst. I had recently learnt a nicer route there and it was under 5 miles. It was a lovely day and so nice to spend some quality time with CC. We had a coffee in the garden of Esme’s tea rooms and caught the bus back to Lyndhurst for our favourite place.. the Greenwood tree cafe for some delicious vegan food.
The following week, I had decided that I was going to eat healthier. Every now and then I would buy a little pack of vegetables to cook at work. I was wasting money on those little bags really. I decided to buy an organic brocolli, a bag of carrots, some mange tout and baby sweetcorn. I would chop these up and cook them at work. This would produce at least 3 days of meals in a row. Then I would swap ingredients. So the following week, I got Green beans instead of Mange tout and a Red cabbage instead of Broccoli etc.. A much cheaper and healtier way of eating and I feel so much better for it. I would add in Green lentils, Black beans or Tuno for the protein. I would still sneak in the crisps and chocolate sometimes in the evenings though (Oh dear!).
I had to come to terms that I am indeed carrying an injury at the moment, so have cut back on the mileage and I am running slower than normal. I get a lot of Glute, Hamstring and IT band pain all in my left leg. I have finally made a physio appointment. It had been put off as I didn’t really want to part with the money. It looks like the injuries are going nowhere in a hurry though. This has however, given me a chance to revisit some of my old trail routes around the area. I have spent so much time running on fast country lanes and around the track. It certainly has made a nice change.
On the 18th of April, John Pelligrini says “Do you fancy doing Horsham parkrun with me?”. I said “Yes please John”.
We were to pick up John’s friend (Christine) from Southampton parkway but her train was cancelled from Poole. Plans had changed as we didn’t have the time to get all the way to Horsham now. We had decided on Sandhurst Memorial as it was a long term Nendy of mine and Christine hadn’t done it either. Anyway, after following John’s Satnav, we ended up at Bracknell. John must have chosen the wrong parkrun on the app but it didn’t matter as neither Christine or I had done Bracknell either. John had recognised his mistake as he parked up though. I thought he was joking and wasn’t convinced until we walked across the field and saw the blue parkrun sign. It was to be my 111th different location. I was still running slower because of the gimpy leg. It was a lovely but quite technical trail route through the woods and around a footy pitch. There were a few short, sharp hills too. It was a lovely sunny day and I managed to get a photo with the incredibly enthusiastic event director. The volunteers were so good and some high fives on the way round too.
We went to the Greenhouse cafe in Fleet, another favourite of ours for the Vegan food. So good there, you must visit!
The week after saw me do my 400th parkrun. I chose Itchen valley where I now know a lot of people due to volunteering. I jogged a nice slow one again, running the first half with my old Lordshill buddy Jeff Scarle. It was a lovely run and I knew most of the volunteers including my beautiful CC. I also did Token sorting and post event closedown to get volunteering credit number 33 and my 46th volunteer. Afterwards we did CPR and Defibrillator training with Meon Valley heartstart. The training was free and many of the regular volunteers took part. Such a great thing to do and to have the knowledge of potentially saving a life.
Not much else to report as I didn’t do any races in April and I have none for May either. Romsey beer race in June but I doubt I’ll be in great shape for that one. My target will now be a fast time at Worchester half marathon on my birthday weekend in September. I had a soft qualifying time to run for Wales in the half marathon and got a rejection letter but hopefully I can run around 82 minutes for the half with some solid mileage and training later in the summer but we’ll see!
