Winter is nigh..

With the Winter championship races well and truly placed on the Eccleshill website and this weekend's Roundhay parkrun being the penultimate race of the Summer championships we can't ignore the fact that Winter is almost upon us. The gloves are out on training runs albeit they sometimes turn out not to be needed! The next step is the clock going back and that will complete the cycle!

Thankfully, we have had dry runs of late though, parkrun at Roundhay on Saturday was beautiful if a little cold, the sun shimmered on the frosty grass as we ran the three loops of the park.  This was the message I got when the results were emailed:

Congratulations on completing your 16th parkrun and your 1th at Roundhay today. You finished in 90th place and were the 14th lady out of a field of 185 parkrunners and you came 1st in your age category VW50-54. You can view the full set of results here. As this is your first run at this event we have set your PB.

Amused that it was my 1th run at Roundhay I then spied that I finished the race first in my age category! I'm just 'taking it' I don't even want to know how many ran in the category!! Although it is obviously a Roundhay pb I was three seconds away from my 5k pb and just one second away from my all time parkrun pb, note to self: 'must try harder'!

The beautiful lake at Roundhay

So another Monday arrived and although I really enjoy our monthly Enterprise Surprise sessions I once again realised we were only a week away from a half marathon as I did the week before the Great North, and I really felt I could not take part in the fun and games session and risk compromising my fitness ahead of the Bridlington Half marathon so I and a few others who are running this weekend opted to do our three mile time trial, a little more effort than our social runs but no twisting and turning involved! I think it's important to keep up with the variety of the sessions but to just be sensible about it. It seems to work for me anyway, I know you have no way of knowing what's around the corner but in my opinion there's no need to invite trouble! Sadly one or two at club have already announced they are pulling out due to injury or illness which always puts a damper on things but on the plus side there are 53 of us going on the trip so it should be a fab day out despite some of us having to run 13.1 miles and I will keep in mind the words of the late great Arthur James and run 'because I can'.

The plan now is to coast along the rest of the week, sports massage with Peter May is booked and so I hope to get to the start line in Brid and more importantly Wetherspoons after the race in one piece!