Tag: parkrun

Back to basics

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Geth and I both went to our usual Thursday morning Slimming World group (and stayed to group) for the first time in… a while! Geth spent the autumn attending groups at different times because of his teaching commitments, so we’ve been out of routine. Neither of us had a particularly good result on the scales today, so I spent a bit of time this afternoon planning out all our meals for the next week, including some nice recipes that I’ve not had the chance to make in the last few months.

Daily running is still going well. I’m really looking forward to the weekend – I’m trying a new parkrun on Saturday, and I’ve got another seven-miler to do on Sunday. Very enthused about it at the moment – which is probably a good place to be in during marathon training to be fair!

Daffodils
Not an OOTD: the first daffodils of the season have arrived in the supermarkets 😀

Today’s earworm playlist:

Michael Land – ‘Captain Dread’
Duran Duran – ‘What Happens Tomorrow’
Ed Sheeran – ‘Shape Of You’
Meat Loaf – ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’

Phone Box Thursday: Gunnista Road, Bressay

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Bressay parkrun, which Geth and I did while in Shetland last summer, is the only parkrun course I’ve run so far that has red phone boxes along the route (Highbury Fields parkrun has a couple very close by, but not quite en route). Bressay has two of them – it’s not quite beating the London Marathon’s phone box haul, but it’s still fairly impressive! Here’s the first one we photographed, which is on Gunnista Road close to the parkrun finish line.

Red phone box
Red phone box, Gunnista Road, Bressay, 10th August 2019.

(Coordinates 60°15’01.8″N, 1°11’18.2″W.)

It’s a bit weather-worn, but I actually quite like the effect on the red paint!

I’ll post the other Bressay parkrun phone box next week.

All the miles

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I ended up doing eight miles this morning between running to parkrun, running parkrun, and running back. It was fairly tiring (haven’t done more than four or five miles in a day since the Great North Run in September), but it felt a lot easier than long runs usually do, seeing as it was broken up by parkrun. I wouldn’t do it every week, but it’s worth remembering if I’ve got a difficult long run coming up.

It’s just been a nice chilled day otherwise. Looking forward to some more videogaming time this evening and tomorrow!

Smashrun 'Solid Month' badge
Not an OOTD: I’m picking up Smashrun badges at a rate of knots at the moment, and today’s addition was the ‘Solid Month’ badge (30 miles in a calendar month). Not bad given that it’s only the 11th!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Lightwood Games – ‘Link-A-Pix Theme’
The Midnight – ‘America 2’
Thought Beings – ‘Echelon’
The Jackson 5 – ‘ABC’
Sidney Samson and Wizard Sleeve – ‘Riverside (Let’s Go)’

A promising week

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A good productive Friday to top off a good productive week. Hope this is a promising sign for the rest of 2020!

After getting some urgent work done for a client, I did my run on the treadmill this morning as it was icy outside. I then headed into town to get all the banking errands done that I hadn’t been able to do earlier in the week. Everything was open and went to plan today! I also nipped into GAME in central Newcastle to see if I could get any hits on my 3DS. No such luck – it’s getting harder and harder as people move across to the Switch. I’ll see if I can get into town on a Saturday sometime when it’s busier.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting work email and admin done. A bit of videogaming this evening before an early night ready for parkrun – I’ve shifted my training plan around and will be incorporating parkrun into my weekend long run tomorrow due to the Metro not running. Shorter tempo run now scheduled for Sunday – which means I have more hours in the day for my Sunday videogaming session!

Steam voucher
Not an OOTD: I also have this little card of goodness (a birthday pressie from Malcolm and Steff) that I’ll be adding to my Steam wallet and buying some PC games soon!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Tomohito Nishiura – ‘Carnival Night’

Homeward bound

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Geth and I are back in Newcastle after spending eleven days in Edinburgh for Christmas and New Year. It’s been lovely, but it felt like a long time to be away from home, so maybe next year we’ll do two separate trips – it’s not that far to drive.

We did one last Scottish parkrun this morning – back to the main Edinburgh parkrun at Cramond, which was my first ever tourist run on Christmas Eve 2016. It was busier today than I’ve ever seen it, but then I’ve never been there in the first week of January before!

Tomorrow will mostly be spent getting things unpacked, washed and put away. I’ve got one more day left to enjoy the Christmas decorations before I have to take them down on Monday.

parkrun 100 top
Not quite an OOTD: my parkrun 100 top arrived today! Not quite in time for today’s run as I had hoped, but a lot quicker than the seven months it took for my 50 top to arrive. Excited to wear this next Saturday!

Today’s earworm playlist:

The Boomtown Rats – ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’

Thirty-five

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Have had a nice calm birthday. I went for a quick run first thing, and then spent the morning opening presents and cards and having alcohol-free fizzy and birthday cake with the family. After a dozy afternoon, I went to the pub with friends for a quiet evening.

Another parkrun tomorrow! I’ve loved doing so many over the Christmas period, but it will also be nice to get back into the once-per-Saturday routine.

Birthday gifts under the tree
Not quite an OOTD: birthday cards and gifts freshly opened underneath the Christmas tree. Love this tradition!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’
Coldplay – ‘Christmas Lights’
Olly Murs – ‘Dear Darlin”
Bowling For Soup – ‘1985’
Duran Duran – ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
will.i.am and Cody Wise – ‘It’s My Birthday’

Two years of blogging

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New Year’s Day is also my blog’s birthday! I started my rambles on here two years ago today. I’ve not had a lot of time for long review posts over the last couple of months, but I love writing on here every day and documenting my life. I have a few things left over from 2019 that I’ll be posting about over the next couple of weeks, but after that I’ll be starting a whole new series of posts for 2020!

I’ve had a lovely New Year’s Day. Geth and I got up early to do the parkrun double this morning, driving to a couple of parkruns that we’d not done before. After that, Auntie Chris arrived for the family tradition of exchanging New Year gifts, and we had a good evening of eating – Dad made Lancashire hotpot for the New Year meal, as is traditional, and I was so hungry after all the running that I ate a whole half of the veggie hotpot! I need to avoid making this a habit once I get into the long marathon training runs, or I might end up eating the whole of Newcastle.

I’m doing RED (Run Every Day) for an undecided period of time, so I’ll be nipping out for a quick mile first thing tomorrow morning. Other than that it will be a very quiet day!

(I’ve not had time to post my New Year Resolutions today – will try and sort that out tomorrow.)

Lonely Goat purple vest top
Not quite an OOTD: Geth and I got Lonely Goat (our running club) tops as New Year presents to ourselves. Looking forward to taking this out for a quick spin tomorrow morning!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Tomohito Nishiura – ‘Searching For Clues’
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’
Jesse Llande and Mel Smith – ‘Poor Old Father Christmas’
The Lancashire Hotpots – ‘Purple Zone’
The Boomtown Rats – ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’
The Boomtown Rats – ‘Rat Trap’
Jason Paige – ‘Pokémon Theme (Gotta Catch ‘Em All)’

Turn of the decade

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Today is the day that we say goodbye to the 2010s and look forward to the 2020s. What will it bring? Hopefully the music will be better (I’ll be doing a whole post about that in a few days’ time).

As such, it was wholly appropriate (I feel anyway) that I spent the day playing with tech from a totally different decade. Dad tested the old five-and-a-half-inch floppies in the drive for the BBC Micro, and they worked! I’ve now identified all the old games on the disk, which was a real blast from the past. There are games on there that I haven’t even thought about for thirty years.

I’m having a quiet evening in with the family for my first sober Hogmanay, and it feels great. I’m looking forward to welcoming in 2020 with alcohol-free fizzy wine and Dad’s traditional Hogmanay pizza, and I’m also very excited about doing my first ever New Year’s Day double parkrun tomorrow morning.

Target Practice, BBC Micro, 1983
Not an OOTD: Target Practice, a Micro game from 1983. I couldn’t quite work out the controls for this one but it looks nice!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Tomohito Nishiura – ‘Searching For Clues’
Kuana Torres Kahele, James Ford Murphy and Napua Greig-Nakasone – ‘Someone To Lava’
Blur – ‘End Of A Century’
Travis – ‘The Last Laugh Of The Laughter’

Monster fighting

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Geth and I are planning on the New Year’s Day parkrun double on Wednesday, so this morning we went for a drive so as to make sure that we know where we’re going. After that, we headed round to Kieran and Lisa’s for an afternoon of boardgaming. It was nice to get a game of Eldritch Horror in for the first time in a while (complete with occasional encouragement from the wee ones) and to catch up with Sharpy for the first time this Christmas period.

A very quiet day tomorrow, although I will be facing the music at Slimming World in the afternoon.

Call To Adventure
Not an OOTD: our Christmas present from Sharpy and Steph was a new boardgame for the collection! Looking forward to trying this one.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Robson & Jerome – ‘I Believe’
Kuana Torres Kahele, James Ford Murphy and Napua Greig-Nakasone – ‘Someone To Lava’
Tomohito Nishiura – ‘Puzzles’

Full century!

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I finally did my 100th parkrun this morning! I wasn’t very organised about it and didn’t have a badge or a balloon or anything, but I’m so glad I finally got to do it, and it was a tourist run at Oriam, which… will be a lovely course in the summer (it was a bog today!). I’ll do a proper post about it soon.

It’s Mum and Dad’s annual Christmas music session this afternoon, so I’ll be helping Mum to get the food prepared in the kitchen. Always nice to hear the tunes.

Will be out and about again tomorrow, but after that I’ll be having a quiet couple of days before things get hectic again for New Year.

100th parkrun at Oriam
Sort of an OOTD: it was the last ever outing for my parkrun 50 top! Hoping that the 100 top won’t take too long to reach me…

Today’s earworm playlist:

Sam Fonteyn – ‘Pop Looks Bach (Ski Sunday Theme Tune)’