parkrun – Project Healthy Fit Me

Whose Parkrunning this weekend?

17/01/202014/01/2020 by ProjectHealthyFitMe, posted in General, Races & Race Reviews

Hello-Garden-Route-Parkrun-1

In case you don’t know Parkrun is a free to enter 5k event that takes place in hundreds of locations across the globe every Saturday morning (normally 9am in the UK), you just need to make sure your register on the Parkrun website first to get your own personalised barcode to ensure your time gets recorded
While many people are loyal to their local Parkrun, Parkrun Tourism or Parkrun challenges are growing in popularity
I’ve only ever taken part in Parkrun a handful of times, but its something I definitely plan to change in 2020 & have challenged myself to visit a different Parkrun each month, starting with my local events Orsett, Billericay, Valentines, Mile End, Southend, Barking, Chelmsford, Gorleston, Dartford, Harrow Lodge and Raphaels.
As I mentioned earlier Parkrun challenges are becoming popular, with the alphabet challenge being the most popular, attending a Parkrun beginning with every letter of the Alphabet, its definitely not the easiest of challenges I believe J & Z are only possible to complete if you are prepared to get on a plane but a little ‘Runcation’ could be fun right?
Or there’s is the Pirate challenge where you have to complete 7 Parkruns beginning with the letter C & one beginning with the letter R, this challenge is definitely easier than the alphabet challenge and could be a fun one to start with
Or Parkrun Bingo consists of finishing a Parkrun for every second on a stopwatch so all of your Parkrun finish times finish in different seconds
Find out more about Parkrun & each of the challenges below and let me know if you know you’re favourite Parkrun & why or maybe you know of another Parkrun challenge, please share I’m all for making activity as fun as possible
Parkrun
The Alphabet Challenge
The Pirate Challenge
Parkrun Stopwatch Bingo

(Please note that none of these challenges are official Parkrun challenges & you do not have to do the events listed to complete the challenge if you have other local Parkruns that fit into the challenge & the links provided are either to the Parkrun blog or to other Parkrun fans blogs)

Weekly Recap : Week 1/30 of my London Marathon training

14/10/201431/10/2019 by ProjectHealthyFitMe, posted in General

This week has been full of so many highs,

Finding out two of my running buddies also received places in this years London Marathon, I have a group of friends from across the country that meet a couple of times a year to eat, drink and run, this year Lynsey, Lois & I were the VLM cheering squad for our friends Cazz, Jemma and Laura who were running, we almost covered a marathon walking across London that day as the queues for the tubes were crazy, even spectating we were tired but still we cheered every runner as they passed & when we saw one of our girls, there were jumps, screams, hugs, tears, it all got a little crazy

Now the 2014 cheer squad have become the 2015 runners, I can not believe we all got lucky in the ballot!!

It will be so good having the girls as support, even though we live 100’s of miles apart, London, Newcastle and Glasgow, we talk pretty much everyday and over the last year have completed Half Marathons in Amsterdam, Bath & Newcastle together, I honestly couldn’t have better running buddies

Having an absolutely fantastic day at work on Friday, it was a long day, I spent 15hrs at Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex, talking to people about Weight Watchers meetings and advising people that in certain area’s they may be eligible to come along to our meetings for free for 12 weeks, I haven’t felt this fired up about work in a long while, the members that come along to my meetings are amazing and very inspirational, in fact at the moment struggling as I am with my own weight I feel a fraud standing up in front of them each week, but from a colleague perspective our job can be quite lonely as we only see colleagues a few times a year, so this event really brought us together as a team and its given me such a huge boost & made me realise that I am not alone & I am not the only one who struggles with my weight occasionally

But the biggest highs were sticking to my running schedule, taking part in the #onebigfatrun virtual 5k, (well actually I was hungover from my friends wedding so I only managed 3.5k, but to be honest I am just pleased I laced up my trainers), I then done another 3.5k a few days later before heading down to Parkrun at the weekend to celebrate their 10th birthday

& finally the scales were kind, 4.5lbs off, fingers crossed for another loss next week

Happy 10th Birthday Parkrun

05/10/201431/10/2019 by ProjectHealthyFitMe, posted in Races & Race Reviews

Race No 18 – International Parkrun Day

Ok so I know I am a few days late but those of you who know me will know birthdays have never been my strong point, so even though I am a little late this one deserves a special mention

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Parkrun, Parkrun was founded by Paul Sinton Hewitt in Bushy Park, London and the event was originally called Bushy Park Time Trial, this grew to a small number events across the UK before officially becoming Parkrun in 2010, where the event has gone from strength to strength

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29488453

The original event had just 13 participant who all returned today to their starting place in Bushy Park to join 1700 other runners to celebrate Parkruns 10th birthday, along with many others in the 375 locations in 9 countries across the world

For those of you that haven’t heard about Parkrun, they offer free to enter, weekly, timed 5k events in local parks every Saturday at 9am, to go along all you need to do is register online at http://www.parkrun.org.uk & print off the barcode they provide and bring it along to the race with you

I went along to my local Parkrun with a friend this morning expecting a celebration, but it was barely even mentioned, I know the event is run by volunteers but I feel with a little more effort they could have really publicised their great little event, but it was hardly mentioned on their Facebook page this week & there was nothing at the event to indicate today was any different, other than possibly them wanting to dash off as they had packed away the flags, the stop watch and the numbers you received before the last two participants crossed the finish line

I have to be honest, I was disappointed today, I am lucky in that I have a few nearby Parkrun events as it’s certainly put me off this particular one and it has also put me off telling newbie runners about Parkrun, in case they find themselves missed by the tail runner, but then I suppose this is not exclusive to Parkrun as I also witnessed this at the Resolution Run in London last year

If you went along to celebrate Parkrun’s birthday yesterday, share below which event you went to