h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Saturday morning, and what am I doing? I'm parkrunning of course!

Since I was a parkrun tourist last week, and will be in Disneyland Paris next week, I thought I'd better put in an appearance at my home course. I've been suffering from a cold all week, and have done barely any training, so I wasn't planning to try for any speed records. But I did know that a fellow dog-runner was intending to come along. So when I saw lovely Samoyed Zola and her owners, we had a friendly chat before the start.

The whistle went, and off we zoomed. I started fast, and to one side, largely to keep out of the way of other runners. Zola and Ruth overtook me about half way round lap 1, but then had to stop for weewees (Zola, not her owner). So we took the lead (pun intended) for a while, until the streak of white passed us again. Mini seemed to relish the chase, and we were hard on the bigger dog's paws. She stopped at the same spot on each of the following 2 laps, which allowed us to get ahead each time, and the whole run was a very good-natured battle of grrrrrl power.

I was giving my Garmin the occasional glance, and knew we were making good time. Very good time, in fact. My previous record at this route was 25:30, and I'd managed an all time best of 25:10 last week on a slightly easier course.

At km 3-4 my legs started to complain, but I'm used to this. And after the 4km marker I began to feel slightly nauseous - again, I know this means I am pushing myself to the limit. The aim when running is collapse in a heap about one step past the finish line

So I was thrilled to bits with an official time of 24:42! Running a sub-25 minute parkrun had been one of the targets I was going to set for 2015, so it's nice to have that one achieved even before the bells have struck on New Year's Eve

I'm rooting for you!

[Amy P]

Weewees

Well done on smashing your personal best