What a year it has been for the world, one to forget with the pandemic effecting how we live & socialise, but there have been a few running positives in this bleakest of years!!!

parkrun

Volunteer Milestone

The year started off so well at Wardown Juniors where I was celebrating my 100th parkrun volunteering day.

So as the run director I decided it would be a purple takeover event, promoting hi-vis volunteering heroes that without them parkrun could never take place each week!

There was cake and sweets afterwards with everyone having a great time on the first junior parkrun of the year 🙂

Always good to help celebrate Vicky Hamblin a very good parkrun tourist friend on her 250th parkrun event held at Alice Holt a tough, but beautiful course!

Well done Vicky! I look forward to meeting you and the rest of the Basingstoke crew again in the future!

Lockdown

So on the 23rd March we all entered a national lockdown in the UK, even though I was lucky in a lot of respects, the loss of parkrun, club coaching especially on our annual club beginners course, did help to have an negative effect on my mental wellbeing for a while during this time 😦

But on the 12th May I took my first steps outside since March with a 1.6 mile walk and it felt brilliant!

Couch to 5K

So how was I going to get fit again after such a long period of running inactivity, take the NHS Couch to 5K programme of course that has inspired so many people into taking up running!

This was one of the best things that I could do for my sole, a structured programme that supports you through 9 weeks with a coached audio files for each session supplied by an accompanying phone app!

I feel this course is brilliant way of introducing non runners into our world and I loved it so much some I wrote a post about my experiences on my journey back to fitness! link here

Virtual Challenges

I still needed something extra to keep me motivated during lockdown with no club meets, parkrun or races almost non existent, I stumbled upon virtual run/walk challenges to sign up for that were a life saver!

Keech Hospice – Summer Challenge (completed)

First up was a summer challenge for my favourite local charity Keech Hospice Care where I set a target of 100 km walking that I started on the 3rd July and finished on the 20th August. I completed this in between each session of my Couch to 5K.

Land End to John O’ Groats 17th August – current

Love this challenge it entails that you have a year to complete a virtual mapped route from Lands End to John O’ Groats from End to End run website that total distance is 874 miles.

You can either run/walk or do both on this challenge and all you have to do is upload your daily total to their interactive website with accompanying photo image of your recorded distance!

As of this moment I am just reached over the halfway point and love the community support from their associated Facebook group 🙂

Conclusion

So in summing up I never really knew how important running was in my life as it took a global pandemic for me to see with the freedom running gives you that I had sadly taken for granted over the years!!

Finally lets hope 2021 is a year that will allow us all to run together again and make new memories 🙂

Stay safe everyone,

Mark aka Silent Runner