Sharing the shoelaces

My Saturday started with a parkrun on The Common. As I’ve got my first race of the year tomorrow, I just wanted to take it easy, so I offered to pace over 30 minutes on Twitter and Facebook. The lovely Nat responded. She’s a really inspirational lady who ran throughout her last pregnancy and who actually improved during that time! Nat is now trying to get her speed back, so she was hoping to finish in around 30 minutes. We were joined by Katherine and Luana for a lovely sociable and chatty run.

Towards the end of the run, I started reminding Natalie how many more minutes she needed to run to make her goal time… 6 minutes… 5 minutes… 4 minutes… 3 minutes… Nat really picked her pace up and finished in 29:09 – way to go!

After the run, we met Inez, another fantastic lady from our running club, and I handed out some lovely motivational sweat pink pink shoelaces to these fab ladies to help spread the word about fit approach.

After the run, I went to the cafe – Stu was Run Directing, so he needed to go to the cafe to prepare the results; I thought I might as well sort the position tokens. I was joined by another of the day’s volunteers, Alice.

Alice, Kirsty and Emily were also the proud recipients of some new shoelaces – let’s hope they are inspired to run faster tomorrow!

On the way back to the car, I noticed a lady circling a tree. She had clearly been doing it for a while as she had worn a path in the mud and leaves. I was intrigued by what she was doing – I think it must have been tai chi.

In the afternoon, Stu and I agreed to meet up with Katherine for a coffee. Unfortunately, this somehow turned into a visit to Tooti’s Gelato Bar. Stu and Katherine are meant to be supporters in my quest to be fit and healthy, but it felt a little like sabotage!

Katherine was particularly excited to receive a pair of pink shoelaces as the laces in her Mizunos are too short!

Katherine’s second treat of the day was her food…

This really should not have been on my pre-race menu. It will not feature on Tuesday’s #TWIET menu!

Tomorrow, I’ve got my first race of the year: Stubbington 10k. As my knee was twingeing during parkrun, I hope it’s OK. It wasn’t anything serious enough to make me think I need to rest it, but if it hurts tomorrow then I’ll take it easy for a couple of days. Unfortunately, as part of my marathon training, I need to run 14 miles tomorrow. I can’t afford to miss it as I didn’t do my long run last week. This means that after racing hard for 10k, I need to continue on and do another 12.5k. It would be easier to race a half marathon than try to continue running after pushing hard for 10k – I can guarantee it won’t be a negative split!

Have you got had to turn a race into part of a long run as part of your marathon training? Do you have any tips?