Fat Girl to Ironman

25 August 2021

Cycling the Coast to Coast Trail

Stuart and I had a child-free day this week, so we decided to go out on our cyclocross bikes and do the Coast to Coast Trail. We’ve not done this route before and hadn’t heard of it until Stu found a leaflet about it. We mostly tend to stick to road cycling. Several years ago, Stu and I did a...

Categories Cycling Comments: 2

22 August 2021

M’s first parkrun at Heartlands

Five years ago, I ran my first international parkrun at Amagerfaelled in Denmark. At the time, I was 33 weeks pregnant with M. Yesterday was M’s first parkrun at Heartlands! She’s taken part in junior parkruns and has run/walked parts of the event before, but she’s never completed 5km before. I’ve run at Heartlands several times before (5 other parkruns...

Categories Running Comments: 2

21 August 2021

Return to the Dune of Doom – St Ives Bay 10k 2021

I ran the St Ives Bay 10k in 2019 and was determined to return one day to better my time. In 2019, it took me 1:08:36. At the time, I vowed to return and beat an hour… however, I could never have foreseen the pandemic and the consequences it had for my job, health and fitness. Anyway, although I knew...

Categories Running Comment: 1

18 August 2021

How I’m keeping my motivation up

Like many people, I’ve found the last 18 months tough, but now that parkrun has returned, I’m feeling more of the joy of running. I’m looking forward to Saturday mornings again. I’m not chasing PBs (I’m a long way from that), but I’m enjoying encouraging M to run and have also set myself a new series of parkrun challenges, helped...

Categories Running Comments: 0

15 August 2021

parkrun Tourism: St Mary’s parkrun, Bridport

My final long weekend has been quite busy so far. I had a bike ride on Friday, completed St Mary’s parkrun on Saturday and have been for a long family walk today. On Thursday evening, I got everything ready for my final Friday Ride (before going back to working 5 days a week). I managed to drop M off at...

Categories Cycling/Running Comments: 0

10 August 2021

Feeling happy about going slowly

This week has been another busy week. I’ve got a lot of exciting projects going on at work and am also busy at home. after the week I’ve had, any progress feels like a step in the right direction and I’m feeling happy about going slowly. Breathless run with Kate On Thursday, I went for a run with fellow parkrun...

Categories Cycling/Running Comments: 0

6 August 2021

Relance – new shoe on the block

Several months ago, I was contacted to ask whether I would like to try out a new brand of trainers. I’m always interested in new products and am on a quest to find the perfect running shoes for me. Enter Relance. I opened the initial box and saw a plain brown box inside. It didn’t give me any clues about...

Categories Kit/Product review/Running Comment: 1

31 July 2021

My parkrun A-Z: Queen Elizabeth parkrun

As Stuart is still injured and M had a gymnastics class, I decided to do some parkrun tourism. My friend Pete agreed to drive Ellie and me to Queen Elizabeth parkrun. It’s my NENDY (Nearest Event Not Done Yet) and also a Q for my parkrun alphabet. Work has been busy for me (for the last 18 months!) so I’ve...

Categories Running Comments: 0

30 July 2021

The return of parkrun

Saturday was a bittersweet day. I should have been taking on Castle to Coast triathlon. It was cancelled in 2019 because of strong winds and in 2020 because of Covid-19, so I was excited about doing it this year. I was training hard, but I got a cold a month ago and had not done any exercise since then. Pete...

Categories Running Comments: 3

11 April 2021

The return of junior parkrun

I was delighted to be at the return of junior parkrun today. It gives me hope that life is returning to normal. I was volunteering as a barcode scanner at New Milton junior parkrun. This is an event that is close to my heart as it was the first event that I became involved in as a parkrun ambassador. It’s...

Categories Running Comments: 5