Half marathons, parkruns and parcels

I know, i know sorry! its been ages since i got round to this next blog post.

So what has been happening since 31st March?... well [que Balamory balloons].....

The first few days of April were a bit rough having had to run with the dreaded man flu. It settled in my throat and chest so breathing was tricky. Coupled with a few days of poor air quality due to the smog threat. it wasn't much fun.

Friday 5th April - I received a parcel from the ladies on the hospice team. It was a box that used to contain brake pads according to the exterior but it contained easter gifts for me and the kids.

Cream Eggs, Bunnies and a heavily modified egg cup with legs. Thank you to the hospice girls for giving us all a great laugh!

Saturday 6th April - Today was the very first Beeston organised Parkrun around the Wierfeld. One full loop with a short back and forth to the finish. a few of us went along including John Gibbon from the hospice team. I didn't actually see John until the finish as he runs a couple of minutes quicker than me on average, but we caught up before Gary Robertson and i popped off for breakfast at the BoatHouse Cafe. over 300 turned up and it was a little crowded during the first couple of km's.

A nice event though and great start for the organisers.

Gary and I

Luckily nobody needed this instruction

John Gibbon and I at the finish

Yay, Breakfast!

and  again!

This is where my memory gets a bit sketchy, there were lots of runs after that, one everyday in fact you can view the calendar here: http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/

Saturday 12th april i was back at Rushcliffe parkrun i ran my quickest parkrun so far; 24 minutes 10 secs, i was very pleased with that and it put me in the top 50 out of 160 runners. You can see the results of that run here: http://www.parkrun.org.uk/rushcliffe/results/weeklyresults/?runSeqNumber=80

Adam and i ran a 10km on sunday 13th April, it was a nice run in under 55 minutes. Adam recorded a shorter time though by 3 minutes! Thats when i decided that i should look at getting a GPS watch again as the iPhone app was letting me down too often. Endomondo itself is a brilliant system but the iPhone side of it just lets the side down. Luckily with a Garmin watch i can still upload the workouts to the endomondo app so i can still keep recording the runs as before.

Monday 14th April - Ive been considering running the Ikano Robin Hood Half Marathon as part of this challenge so spurred on  by the London marathon runners on the 13th April and our 10k run the same day i ended up running 20.58km in 1 hour and 55 minutes. i found it really easy to do until the last 2 km and my legs started to hurt a little. i won't run that distance again now until the day. Below is a few shots as i ran through Attenborough Nature Reserve as the sun went down.

Since that run I've been sitting in ice baths after returning from each run and I've been using my foam roller a lot more as it really has affected my legs, namely my calfs. I think leading up to the run in september i will perhaps walk a couple of days before the day and the same the first few days after. With no option of rest days my legs recovery is tough.

Freezing!

Saturday 19th April - another Beeston parkrun and my legs really took some persuading to do it. I even too a couple of Ibuprofen before the run. after the first km i felt a little better and i was able to get round in about 25 mins or so. rewarded myself with a sausage cob and a tea at the cafe again, it turns out that if you have a Parkrun barcode you can get it for £2 now.

My Garmin 210 watch arrived this evening too.

Sunday 20th April (Easter Sunday) - lots of chocolate and a family lunch meant i didn't get out on a run until 9pm. it was the first run using the watch and it worked really well. loading up to endomondo was nice and easy too. Having the watch now means that i won't be tweeting and face booking daily runs, instead i will probably be adding them weekly so i will more than likely just post a link to the calendar instead.

www.justgiving.com/5kaday