My first parkrun since my bottom injection, and can you guess what happens? Two days before parkrunday, I go out to see The Cure in Italy like the sad old goth I am, get absolutely trolleyed on cocktails with names like Paris Hilton and Julia's Strap On, and fall flat on my face, too drunk … Continue reading Farfalle parkrun

What happens when you're doing your best running in years and are on the brink of smashing that six year old PB? You get injured of course. I have developed a literal pain in the bum, otherwise known as piriformis syndrome. I don't know why I have this as I have not been doing anything … Continue reading Crane parkrun and Hackney Half

The trouble with pouring your heart and soul into your half marathon training and not falling over or catching Corona in the days before is that you find yourself on the start line an absolute bag of nerves with no excuses for failure. There's no "well, I would have done better if I had trained … Continue reading Brighton Half Marathon 2022

After starting 2022 in my usual catastrophic fashion and flunking RED January at 9:20 on January 1st, I decided to try again with RED February. As February is a bit shorter than January I decided to start a bit early, on 22nd January, and therefore as of today I have run thirty days in a … Continue reading RED FEB

Half Marathon training is well underway which is a good thing because I have already booked five for this year and it's only February. I can't work out if it is going well or not. On one hand, I seem to be able to run long distances very comfortably (no lying on floor groaning when … Continue reading Harrow parkrun

On Friday I had one of my bright ideas. These never end well. The bright idea in question was to do my long run on the running track. I thought this was a good idea because a) it was New Year's Eve and surely no one else would be there b) if something started to … Continue reading Sunny Hill parkrun

Isabel Trail, Stafford, 13 November 2021 Finally I'm in good form, the weather is kind, it's a perfect course (a flat out and back on a disused railway line). I'm going all out for a PB. I don't even care that I have a half marathon the next day because we all know I'm never … Continue reading A Tale of Three parkruns

In three weeks and three days I am doing a triathlon. Considering I signed up for it on 23rd November 2018, nearly three years ago, you can hardly say this has been sprung on me, yet I still feel completely incompetent. Perhaps this is because I have had so many events cancelled that I am … Continue reading I just can’t wait to become a triathlete!

Last week, we had an outbreak of the other kind of weather. Hot, sunny, weather. Finally, it was time to turn off the heating, take off the woolly socks and go swimming without worrying about how I would get the feeling back in my fingers afterwards. The only problem with hot, sunny weather is that … Continue reading Clapham Common Chase the Sun

The Hertfordshire Half is to half marathons what Sunny Hill is to parkrun. Featuring hills, undulations, slopes, mounds, mounts, hummocks, bumps, heights, ascents, inclines and gradients, the only thing you can say for it is that there is no mud. (Except for that bit in the second kilometre where you have to go round a … Continue reading Hertfordshire Half Marathon

Thought I had better post something to confirm that I am still alive and have not given up running (or blogging). Recently there has been a deluge of races as everything that was postponed over the last six months finally stopped being postponed, leading to comedy moments such as me opening my post and realising … Continue reading Still Alive

My first half back could have gone better, to say the least. The problems started pretty much as soon as I arrived at the racecourse and discovered that there was no queue for the women's toilets because apparently the vast majority of the entrants were men (378 men and 101 women according to the results … Continue reading Aintree Half

The St Albans 10k was great and everything, but for me it didn't really feel like races were back until I'd done a RunThrough race! And the first back for me was one of my favourites, Chase the Sun at the Olympic Park. Even though I'm not normally an evening runner, I do really like … Continue reading Chase the Sun Olympic Park

For the tenth (I think) time in the last year, I find myself horrified by the fact that I have a half marathon to run that looks like it isn't going to be cancelled. It's worth mentioning that every single one of those half marathons have been cancelled in the end, some with just days … Continue reading Ouch

And therefore after this post I will only post about running. I won't go as far to say that I will never mention The Corona again, but I'm sick of talking about it, and sick of adding a caveat about not knowing what will happen next to everything I dare to wish or plan for. … Continue reading This is a running blog

Random bleakness from today's run. It's all gone a bit Leyton Orient. Last week I ran my fastest 10k race (1:10:14) on Saturday, my second fastest ever half marathon as a training run on Monday (2:42:24) and equalled my 5k PB on Wednesday (33:53) despite being knackered and having a bit of a hangover. I … Continue reading Two nil up at half time…

One event that I had planned for 2020 that didn't get cancelled was Dock2Dock, the annual swimming race in my favourite swimming spot, Victoria Dock. The race has three options: 1.5k, 5k and 10k, and takes you all the way from the usual course under the Unreasonably High Footbridge, under Connaught Bridge into the next … Continue reading Dock2Dock

The last six months have been like the worst marathon you can possibly imagine. Six laps of Shoreham Power Station. On the first lap everyone was stealing the toilet paper from the portaloos and stockpiling the finish water. On the second lap, loads of the runners died and you had dodge the dead bodies. On … Continue reading RunThrough Battersea 10k

Pymmes parkrun is the second closest to my flat and the third different parkrun that I attended (after Finsbury Park and Hackney Marshes).  Despite it's proximity I haven't been back since that solitary visit nearly three years ago and you might be forgiven for thinking that it was a horrible and unsuitable parkrun.  This is … Continue reading Pymmes parkrun

My Facebook feed was full of posts about the Brighton Half Marathon yesterday, which means my half marathon PB is now a mammoth four years old.  It's past the toddler stage and soon it will be going to school, and before you know it, it'll be up and away and gone to university and then … Continue reading Limp

The Ladies' Pond on Hampstead Heath is a funny place.  It reminds me of one of those impressionist paintings, full of women in a state of undress frolicking in a meadow and basking in a semi-delirious state of joie de vivre.  I have mostly only visited in summer before, where the queue to get in … Continue reading The Ladies’ Pond

What did I tell you? I thought maybe going vegan had made me immune to colds because I hadn't had one since April 2018, but clearly not.  I started coughing and sniffing a bit during yesterday's long run, but assumed it was just the cold air irritating my lungs.  I felt quite exhausted in the … Continue reading Sick

I'll spare you a long entry on last night's Chase The Moon, as it's the fifth I've been to and this could get repetitive!  I ran it slowly as a "recovery run", hence a time of 38:27.  I didn't look at my watch for the whole race, and I made it my mission to get … Continue reading The Final Chase The Moon