I’ll admit, I haven’t been to parkrun for a while. It’s all the usual excuses – busy from a full on first term at school, tired from work with the extra stress of being exposed to large groups of potential germy children in small spaces, my provisionally named five-week-bronchitis. Oh and the whole ‘global pandemic’ thing which has completely upended every aspect of our life. You know, the usual stuff.
Luckily, this morning, a parkrun launched near me. Around my very own neighbourhood in fact. Amazing! Husband didn’t accompany me on this one – he chose instead to run the much more exclusive Treadmill parkrun, to which I wasn’t invited. Whatever. I heard the scenery’s rubbish anyway.
The run briefing was pretty standard – keep left, dogs on a short leash, run at least 1.5 metres from any other human you encounter and don’t cough in public unless you want to be arrested. I didn’t stay for the first timer briefing – pretty familiar with this course, having done multiple freedom runs on it over the years.
And then we (I) were off!
It’s a pretty easy course to follow and is mostly on suburban concrete paths. There’s not much signage but it’s all right turns so you shouldn’t really get lost.
I’m normally not one to speak ill of the volunteers but the course check person either didn’t get out of bed or travelled by canoe when checking the course as a lot of it was under water.
However, I channelled my teacher persona and told myself what I’d tell my students – “You’re not made of paper – get on with it!”. And I ran straight through.
I did encounter others on the course – a few other walkers and runners who were all being respectful and keeping their distance, as were the horses, rabbits and teddy bears.
Finishing this one, I had (obviously) very wet shoes and a very big smile – haven’t had that much fun at parkrun for ages and their finish arch was pretty spectacular.
It wouldn’t be parkrun without a post-parkrun coffee and breakfast and we’ve been very grateful that the fabulous Millars cafe is serving takeaway and local to us so husband popped by for a coffee and a muffin. And then, not letting physical distancing become social isolation, we joined our parkrun friends for our usual Saturday morning chat session, just slightly differently.
Would I do this parkrun again? Probably. Ok, definitely. Can’t beat a parkrun on your doorstep and, while the run might have been solo, the morning definitely wasn’t lonely with the breakfast as friendly as ever. So, until my usual parkrun is back up and running/walking, I think this one will do.
macgirl running 