Gosh it's really had been a long time since my last blog! There are no good excuses
to give you! However let me catch you up; this is what has happened
since 1st June (grab your hat for a whistle-stop tour!)
I have finally finished my HNC course in Sport, Health, Fitness
and Exercise however I am still awaiting my final mark!! I am free again from study, all this free time what should I do??
I have become a run director at my local parkrun which is
Hanley and I have to say it is the most friendly parkrun there is around Stoke
on Trent (ok ok it is the only one around Stoke on Trent) so far I have been RD
4 times and I am notorious for a) not needing to use the mega phone and b) counting
up rather than down on the starting line…. Well it adds to the excitement.
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| Don't we scrub up well |
Being part of the parkrun family I, with my fellow directors and a few lucky parkrunners, attended the Stoke on Trent Personality of Year awards evening, we were nominated for the Sport in the community award. Unfortunately we didn't win, but we had great fun during the evening ( I believe there may have been some wine drinking going on!) and it was strange seeing everyone in there proper clothes for once!
I have been away on holiday to America, we drove down
Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) from San Francisco down to Venice in Los
Angeles. We had a great time visiting the
sights of SF Alcatraz, Napa Valley, Lombard Street, China Town, traveling on a
tram to down town and of course Sports Basement to name a few of the sights we saw. Whilst we were there we also
ran the See Jane Run Half marathon which gave us great views of the bay
area.
Then we started to travel down the
PCH to Santa Cruz for couple of nights, Malibu and finally stopping the last few nights on the Boardwalk In Venice Beach.
Where we also finished off the holiday with the Red White and Blue Half Marathon run
along the Santa Monica Boardwalk.
All in
all we had a great holiday not what you could call relaxing but it was still
fun all the same.
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| Trentham encampment |
I managed to get a late entry to the Thunder Run 24 race at
Catton Park and pulled together a team of 5 fellow Trentham running mates. I was a little daunted as we got a team place
2 weeks before the race and also our team only had 5 people in it!! Although we
had all said it was for fun…..the pressure was on a little. I was team captain and organised the team and
the timings of the laps, at my initial calculations we would all be running 4
laps of the 10k course with the men in our team running 5. However it soon transpired on Saturday that
my timings were way out and we would all have to run 5!! So this last weekend I ran 50k which makes me a ultra runner!! I know it wasn't all in one go, but I am still taking it!
All in all we had a
brilliant weekend, alongside our team of 5, there was another Trentham Team of
8, a couple of Trentham Solo runners and finally two club mates running with
other teams. It was and is a truly amazing
event, like glasto for runners, the camaraderie is brilliant not only cheering
on your team, any other local teams and also cheering on the runners who ran past our camp at all times of the day and night over the weekend!
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| Thunder Ru 2014 DONE! |
We had some brilliant results, our fellow runner Janson Heath
won 1st solo male, and Jill Phillips came 3rd in ladies
solo. Our team of 8 finished 6th
and our little team of 5 finished 17th in our category, not bad off
no training and only 1 hour sleep in 36 hours!!
The only downside was the lack of internet (although hardly surprising
as we were in a field!) but a lot of my twitter friends were running and it would
have been great to catch with them, oh well may be next year.
And with that I think we are all caught up, I will try not to leave it so long next time I promise,
however I do have a couple of busy months with, training for Great North, Robin
Hood Half, Amsterdam Marathon and also Rewind 80 festival in August all to look
forward to.
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| Kirsten photo bomb |
