Tag: parkrun

parkrunday: Town Moor #526

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It’s sort of for the best that I ditched my NENDY* touristing plans this week, given that my NENDY wasn’t on this morning. It was one of the many NE England parkruns that cancelled due to Storm Malik. Geth and I went to our home parkrun at Town Moor instead… and it was mental in the high winds. Easily the toughest winds on the Moor I’ve ever experienced, and the Moor is breezier than most places anyway due to being so exposed. Most of today’s run was focused on staying on the path and not getting blown over, and there were points where I was sprinting yet standing still, if you see what I mean. I really felt for the volunteers who were also struggling to avoid being blown away!

I am quite looking forward to winter weather being over.

Still, it was fun in a sort of unhinged way, and it was nice to have an excuse not to worry about pace.

Post-parkrun
Various windswept attempts at the post-parkrun selfie. Should have given it up as a bad job, really. Lost my barcode tag shortly after these pictures – a victim of the storm!

Town Moor is off next week so won’t be there. No idea where we will be though!

*NENDY: parkrun tourist speak for ‘nearest event not done yet’.

The same is good

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In the quiet part of the year, every weekend is the same, and that’s the way I like it.

I was going to go further afield for parkrun tomorrow morning, but I don’t have the energy at the moment as there are a lot of other things going on (January is quiet social-wise but not work-wise or study-wise… certainly not this year anyway!). Just the usual will be fine.

After that I’ll be on my sofa all weekend. Probably not fully awake. It’s been another long week.

parkrunday: Jesmond Dene #44

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Monthly volunteering slot today! Geth and I were marshalling at our favourite point along the Jesmond Dene parkrun route.

Volunteering at parkrun
One of the many nice bridges in the Dene!

Jesmond Dene is gorgeous even in the winter, but I was thinking this morning how nice it will be to see it in summer again, especially as (*crosses fingers*) it looks like we will have a full summer of parkrunning there this year.

Back to running next week… possibly somewhere new!

Long week

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I am very glad that it’s Friday! Work and studying have combined in a fairly tiring way this week. I’m also very glad that January is quiet in terms of weekends, as I’m looking forward to dozing and hibernating a bit after parkrun volunteering tomorrow.

Because I’m very busy at the moment there are a few things I’ll need to do during the day tomorrow after I’m home, but I’m planning a really quiet day on Sunday!

parkrunday: Town Moor #524

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Geth and I were back on the Moor for the first time in a while this morning – it was the first time in a couple of months for me, though Geth did go in early December.

Post-parkrun
Much happier with my parkrun time than two weeks ago!

I honestly thought I’d be really slow again because all my three-mile runs this last week have taken well over forty minutes and I’ve been finding my slow pace a bit frustrating. However, I found today I was able to start out strong for the first mile, keep up for the second mile, and bomb the last mile – just as I was doing at Town Moor in the autumn! So I can pull the speed out from somewhere – I just don’t know how to apply it to my solo runs. My weekly parkrun will have to be my main speedwork session for this marathon training block, I feel.

I kept my barcode in my clear phone case today while I was having it scanned, but I ended up as an unknown and had to email in for my result to be added, so I’d probably better keep it out of the case in future.

Still making plans for the next few parkrundays but we will end up somewhere!

Unexpectedly inside

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No parkrun this morning 🙁 All my local ones were off due to ice and I didn’t have time to get to the slightly-further-afield ones that were on. Disappointed as I was really looking forward to it this weekend. I went on the treadmill instead and watched a ‘virtual run around Disneyland Florida’ video so that I could pretend it was summer.

Summer on TV
Nice to visit an imaginary world when summer feels very far away.

Planning to get all the boring weekend stuff done today so that I can do the fun stuff tomorrow.

A proper weekend again

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First work-ish week of the year done (I’m not back at work till next week but I have been back on my course and there’s been a lot to do so it’s felt like a normal work week in many ways) and so Friday night is appreciated once more. I’ll be back at my home parkrun tomorrow for the first time in ages and spending some time over the weekend setting out my marathon training plan for starting on Monday. In fact I’ve got a bit of a list of stuff to do in general over the weekend but we’ll see how much of it gets done, because I do need a quiet one before work starts in earnest.

The Christmas decorations came down yesterday, which has highlighted a few things that I feel look slightly ‘wrong’ in the house, so I may be doing some furniture moving soon as well.

No picture today (because I’ve decided that I will no longer post random just-taken pictures of whatever’s currently on my side table if I haven’t happened to photograph anything interesting during the week) and no earworm playlist either, because that will be going private and possibly returned to for statistical purposes in the future.

parkrunday: Portobello #266

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It was lovely to be back doing a New Year parkrun yesterday, after missing it during the parkrun COVID hiatus last year. There are no longer opportunities to do New Year’s Day doubles (they were getting over-popular and thus dangerous and so parkrun HQ have put a stop to it), but in all honesty it was a lot less stressful just being able to focus on one parkrun by itself, rather than worrying about getting back in the car and dashing on to the next one like we did two years ago!

Unfortunately (and typically – it hasn’t happened on any of my other runs during Christmas!), my chronic hip/back/leg issue flared up horribly as soon as I started running, and so I didn’t have an enjoyable run. I was about ten minutes slower than I typically have been recently, and it really felt like I was back where I started all those years ago 🙁 The only way is up for 2022, I suppose.

Portobello parkrun
Looking a bit miserable on lap two. Photo by Portobello parkrun.

I expect we’ll be back at one of our regulars next week, and hopefully I’ll be back to a more regular time as well.

…and hello 2022!

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Geth and I did do a New Year’s Day parkrun this morning but I’ll save my regularly scheduled parkrunday post for tomorrow. Lots of 2022 stuff to discuss today!

This year’s non-binding New Year Resolutions:

  • Sort out the house. It didn’t happen last year and it may not happen this year, but I would at least like to get some more stuff up on the walls (including that spice rack I bought a year ago) and work out a more manageable cleaning schedule.
  • Don’t book any midweek trips away and assume I can just ‘squeeze any work in’. I’m far too busy to be away during the week. Trips will be weekend-only with very rare exceptions.
  • Get one or two of my years-in-the-making longer game projects published by focusing on those rather than short things for jams and competitions.
  • Use the skills from my TechUP course to build at least two fairly complex websites.
  • Create some games using Python!
  • Take another big chunk off my marathon PB at the Edinburgh Marathon in May.
  • Get back to the fitness level I was when everything screeched to a grinding halt in March 2020.
  • Get my parkrun ‘different events’ total up to at least 30, continue to volunteer once a month, get my Wilson index to 15 (geeky – don’t worry if you don’t know what that is) and take part in parkrun every possible parkrunday!
  • Listen to more music and keep a closer eye on what’s going on with synthwave, industrial and heritage artists.
  • Actually leave the UK for the first time in four years (Ireland is the plan… not going far but it’ll be something!).
  • Catch up with what’s been happening with Doctor Who. It’s my favourite TV series but I’ve drifted away from the fandom over the last few years as I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t been hugely fond of the Whittaker/Chibnall era. I’m about two and a half series behind!
  • Finish all the books I’m reading. I’ve got into an awful habit over the last year where I start a book, read it for a week or so (last thing at night in bed is my reading time), neglect reading for the following week or so (because I’m anxious about not getting enough sleep if I read… even though I know I sleep better if I do), then abandon it and start a different book. This year, I’m going to concentrate on one at a time and read them right to the end. 20 books in 2022 seems like a good target!
  • Make a LOT more time for videogaming by keeping my evenings and weekends free. My game backlog is probably 1,000+ now and it’s time to start whittling that down. It’s my favourite way to relax and I most definitely have not been doing enough relaxing in 2021, so this has to be a real priority over the next year.

It’ll be interesting, as ever, to come back to this post in a year’s time! I didn’t make any resolutions last year except the house-sorting one, which was kind of a fail… let’s hope there’ll be more hits than misses in 2022.

P.S. Happy birthday blog! Four years today since I started my daily rambles.

Shin Megami Tensei V
Geth’s current videogame (which he has been playing nonstop since Christmas Day) is Shin Megami Tensei V, which I got him for Christmas. I would love to spend as much time videogaming as Geth does, and in order to do so I am planning to reorganise a few things this year.