Event Six – Burnham-on-Sea Parkrun

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last event, but I’m back with another parkrun and it was another rainy one.    Adi came with me again and this time we were prepared for the bad weather.  She did not even attempt my flooded lane, I met her a few miles away and then we drove the 45 minutes to Burnham-on-Sea.

Despite the weather we were in good spirits and excited about doing a new parkrun.  We were nice and early so got a good parking space, then sat in the car for a while and had the usual “how many layers to wear” discussion.  Bad weather is tough – trail shoes or trainers? head band or hat? Gloves or no gloves? The temperature wasn’t too bad so I opted for a short sleeve top and a lightweight jacket and some gloves – which worked fine 🙂

The pre run briefing was brief as it really was hammering down.  They had moved the start due to flood water – and they also decided to run the loop in opposite direction to usual – so that the big puddles were at the end.

As soon as everyone had walked to the start it was 3,2,1 GO!  No hanging around – much appreciated.

All parkruns are 5km and today this distance seemed enough, especially as my legs were still aching from Cross Country Skiing.  Cross Country Skiing??? Yep !! That’s where I have been the last week, in Chamonix, training for an up coming event in Finland at the end February.  I was hoping to be able to do some kind of event in Chamonix, but in the end just learning the technique and training was all I could manage 🙂

The beginning of the run is through parkland round a little lake – at least I think it was a lake, may have been a big puddle lol! Then we headed towards the sea front where the wind came into play.  At first it was behind us, for I guess a kilometre or so, but then we did a U-turn and almost came to a standstill as the headwind blew at us.  I tried to tuck in behind a girl in front of me but she was too small, really could have done with a five foot wide man!

Adi and I had decided to do our own thing today, rather than try and run together.  Her recovery has been going well and her running has progressed a lot, but she wanted to stick to her run/walk strategy while listening to her running podcast – although in the end she didn’t walk much due to the rain.

I saw Adi as I ran back on after the U-turn and she looked good – we high fived as we passed.  Further along was another turn and we were back out of the wind.  The final 500m was full of big puddles, everyone just splashed through them, cold wet feet – yay! But the end was near.  A quick burst of effort and I finished in 30.26, Adi was not far behind in 33.57 – woohoo!!

While I waited for Adi I had a nice chat with a man who liked my trainers – parkrun is friendly like that, then it was off to get our barcodes scanned.  Lots of problems with soggy barcodes today but I have a little plastic one which worked well.

We were drenched, and sitting in the car on our towels we decided that we couldn’t face the drive home this wet. And so ensued a comical ten minutes where we tried to strip down in a public car park and get dry clothes on.  As this is pretty much my sixth wet race I’m now pretty good at this.

Six down – 44 to go!