It’s fair to say that the summer holidays sent me a little off track this year. It was our first year of experiencing a school summer holiday, and the break in routine was tougher than expected. One of many things I dropped in an attempt to balance was blogging, and so I thought I would return with a little summary of my summer’s running. Unfortunately, I also seem to have dropped running, and so this is literally every run I did in those 6 and a bit weeks.

20th July – Longrun Meadow parkrun
We’d taken the decision not to tour over the summer – Ben spends enough time in holiday traffic at work without doing it for fun. So I kept it local at Longrun Meadow, taking the buggy round in a satisfactory 32:05

26th July – 4 mile run
The first week of the holidays, I took the kids to stay with my parents on the Isle of Man. We packed a lot in, but I struggled to find time and energy to run. The final morning was all or nothing, and so I had to choose between running somewhere new and doing my standard 4 mile loop. I kept it with what I know, and didn’t regret it one bit.

27th July – Longrun Meadow parkrun
I tried my hand at the First Timers briefing, which I’ve wanted to do for ages. Typically I picked a week with a course diversion. I then headed over for my run. At the start I bumped into Chris, who had been in my Beginners Group at RFRC this Spring. I kept him talking enough to slow him down for the first mile, then we kept things going til the end. He smashed his PB with a very respectable 28:11, and I had found a purpose to keep positive while running.

3rd August – Burnham & Highbridge parkrun
While I was struggling with being ‘trapped’ at home, my primary reason for heading away was that I was feeling rubbish and antisocial, and there was a takeover at Longrun Meadow (they got record turnout that day). So I took KK and the buggy over to Burnham. We got the last space in the car park (yay), got set up, and headed off for what I swore would be a gentle trot. Somewhere during one of the overtakes I remembered I am incapable of taking it easy at Burnham, and I finished in 29:11, a new buggy PB.

4th August – junior parkrun
11th August – junior parkrun
Consecutive runs at junior means one thing – I missed parkrun on 10th August.

17th August – Longrun Meadow parkrun
Starting to feel the pressure of an upcoming race, I pushed myself hard at parkrun. I felt pretty close to the limit the whole time, but the lack of running was really showing. I finished in 26:59, which was insanely good given my state of training, but absolutely gutting at the time when I knew I’d pushed so hard to get there.

18th August – junior parkrun + 1 mile buggy run
In a desperate attempt to get even the smallest run in, I ran a mile back from junior parkrun. With buggy, naturally.

24th August – Longrun Meadow parkrun
This was a bit of a weird run for me. The day before a race is often a time to go slow, but I’d already screwed up any chance of properly racing so just took it at what felt right. Mostly I spent the whole 29 minutes and 27 seconds thinking about how damn hot it was. And the fact that my race the next day would be starting an hour later.

25th August – Battle of Sedgemoor 10k
Ben’s done this race before, and wrote it up here. With my lack of training, I was purely running this for the Somerset Series, and gave myself the target of finishing in an hour. Since Ben ran it, the start has moved location, which means the race starts with a downhill, followed immediately by a long uphill. It was insanely hot, and the start was pretty crowded. There were a few too many cars close to runners on the course for my liking. I got to the 5k marker in around 28:30, and remember thinking how grateful I was to parkrun for knowing full well that I can run 5k in 31:30 when completely exhausted. And sure enough, I finished in 57:33.

31st August – Longrun Meadow parkrun
Rounding off the summer, I ran parkrun with both kids (one in the buggy, naturally). Lani struggled with her energy levels after a busy summer, and also with the fact she hadn’t been doing as much running recently. But we made it round in 50:58. It was also a great opportunity for Lani to showcase her brand new 10 top, which got her a lot of welcome attention.

So there you have it. Clearly my big success of the summer was to just keep turning up to parkrun. I’ve come to realise that if that’s the only run I do each week then at least I’m doing that. Obviously, I’d like to get my act together and start training properly, but I need to keep the balance so I appreciate the little bits.

But seriously, can we tour again now?