we are family...

For 26 weeks in the summer months, the parkrun team from Colwick run a weekly interval training session on the Victoria Embankment in Nottingham.  It's called the Weekly Wednesday Workout (WWW) and meets on the open parkland just by the river Trent at 6pm from early April to the end of September.  We warm up, do loads of stretching exercises and strides, and then we run intervals around a coned out track.

We follow a structured programme, working on pace in some weeks - with short, sharp intervals - and building endurance at speed in other weeks with longer sessions around the track. Three times in the season we run a "magic mile" - a mile time trial.  At the end of every session, we plank: building up our core strength. Each session is carefully supervised and stopwatched by members of the Colwick parkrun core team.

It's hard work, but it's very rewarding and a lot of fun too with some real characters from Nottingham's running community. I've made some friends here. It also works: training like this does make you a stronger and better runner.

I actually started attending these sessions before I ever ran a single parkrun.... although it only took a few weeks before I felt so ashamed of that fact that I turned up at Colwick Country Park for the first time in August 2014.  I'd been aware of it for at least a year, but had been sort of avoiding it because I thought I knew myself well enough to know that I would want to flog myself against the clock every week and that it would hurt.  After a slow start, I guess you could say that the habit stuck.  I've now run 72 parkruns and volunteered 36 times, including 6 times as Run Director - and I'll be timing at Colwick on Saturday and marshalling at Gedling Juniors on Sunday to take that total to 38.... I never would have started guiding visually impaired runners either, if it wasn't for parkrun.  And to think that it all comes back to those interval sessions on a Wednesday evening on the Embankment over summer.  I think I only started attending at all because they used to offer loyalty stamps for my running club, and I was very keen to get the 50 stamps in 53 weeks that would earn me a pair of running shoes and had missed every other qualifying run that week.

And you know what? Every session is completely free.  Everyone there gives up their time for free to help other runners out of nothing but love and community spirit.  They're amazing people. I've met a lot of generous people through running over the last five years, but these guys are definitely right at the top of the pile.

Helen - one of the core team - told me at one session as we walked back to the start line at the end of an interval that the main reason they do this was to build links with the running community and to generate a pool of volunteers for the parkrun.

....well, they definitely hooked me.  These people - this community - have enriched my life immeasurably.  I get so much pleasure from volunteering too.  I came here to run faster, and actually my times have become almost completely irrelevant to me. I would even go as far as to say that I enjoy volunteering more than I enjoy running.

It was the last session of the year this evening.

I'm going to have to go for a run on my own next Wednesday after work, and it just won't be quite the same.

pale blinds drawn all day...

For the last couple of months, I've been planning a special day at my local parkrun to celebrate and to encourage visually impaired runners.  We're lucky enough to have a couple of regular VI runners at Colwick, and Terry - who introduced me to guiding - has now done well over 100 parkruns with us and has been guided around the course by more than 30 different guides. Accessibility is one of the core principles of parkrun: it's open to everyone and is completely free; it doesn't matter if it takes you 15 minutes to get round the 5km course, or it takes you over an hour... everyone is welcome.  We wanted to try and extend this to people with visual impairments.

Running has never been more popular: more and more people are getting up and out on 'couch to 5k' programmes and the like.  At parkrun, we reckon that people with visual impairments are just the same, with the crucial difference that they have a much more obvious barrier to participation: they can't see and likely need some help to get involved.

So, part of the idea of a VI parkrun day was to try to encourage participation amongst the VI community and to show them how accessible parkrun is and how easy it is to come along and to walk, run, jog or volunteer.

Just as importantly though, this was an opportunity to drive awareness of the barriers facing visually impaired people amongst a community at parkrun who have already shown they're keen to get involved by sticking their hands up to volunteer as guides.

So I spent some time over the last few months trying to engage with both our community of parkrunners, our local network of VI runners and guides and some of the local VI charities....and the big day was last Saturday.  It took a bit of time to get everything together, but in the end, I think it was worthwhile.

Time well spent.

You can read the full story in the run report here.

Two weeks ago, there were 16 recorded blind runners at parkruns across the whole UK....which doesn't feel like all that many to me, to be honest.  At our VI parkrun, we had 3 blind runners and eight sighted runners who bravely ran around the course blindfolded with a guide.  I was maybe hoping for more, but one of the key things I've learned along the way is that, if we're serious about engaging visually impaired people, then we need to work harder with the charities to reach out into the VI community - many of whom have plenty of other things to worry about than running. The blind runners we did reach were already runners and already parkrunners; blind people who aren't runners aren't generally able to just get up and head off to a strange park for a run... for starters, they need transport and they need guides.  I'm sure they're out there, but if we want to reach them, we're going to have to work harder to get them to the starting line.

Still, I'm pleased to have been involved and I think it went pretty well.  The next one will be better.

Oh, and apparently I have a commanding presence on the megaphone....

it's a long way to the top...

It was kind of a busy weekend.

It started early on Saturday morning, when I took a break from my marathon training to make my debut as Run Director at Colwick parkrun.  I love parkrun. I avoided going for about a year because I thought I knew myself too well, and that a timed 5km run would see me want to flog myself relentlessly every week.  It was like that for a few weeks, but after a little while, I discovered that I actually enjoyed volunteering more than I did the actual running.  Parkrun is incredibly inclusive and welcomes people of all shapes and sizes and all speeds.  More than that, Colwick is a real community.  What started with guiding Terry, over the course of about 15 months or so, ultimately culminated with me taking hold of the megaphone.  We had a record attendance too, with some 366 runners - a good 125 or so more than we normally get and comfortably more than our previous biggest attendance.

Of course, I didn't do this on my own. I was carefully prepared through the week by a very attentive member of the core team, and then a crack team of volunteers took over as I ponced about with the megaphone.

It was a good morning.  Here's the run report I wrote.  I enjoyed it so much that I'm also doing it all again on 2nd April.

Straight after that - after a short detour to solve a minor crisis at work - we drove down to Bath to take part in the half marathon.  It's supposed to be flat and fast, but the purpose of taking part wasn't to race but to practice race conditions for the marathon.  Obviously, I was running quite a lot faster than marathon pace, but I consciously eased down a little after halfway.... but still managed to accidentally improve my PB by 40 seconds.  Good job I didn't stop for a pee, eh?  I don't really race half marathons any more. In fact, I think that PB comes from the last one I ran hard... the Robin Hood in 2012.  Running is a very relative thing, and I"m aware that lots of people would quite like to have a PB of 1:51:19, but I'm actually slightly embarrassed because I actually think it should be at least 5 minutes faster. Another time, perhaps.

Still, it was a nice weekend with a couple of nights away in a nice town.

Training has been a bit of a grind this year, and it was nice to break it up a bit with a mere 13.1 miles with 15,000 other people instead of running on my own around the Big Track alongside the Trent.  In spite of the London Marathon Facebook page saying that it was nearly time to taper, the next few weeks contain all of my longest training runs: 18 miles this Sunday, then 20 miles, then 22 miles... so there's still a fair way to go before the starting line just yet.

Ah well.  Soon be done.

This is what it's all about, of course. We're raising money for the MS Trust, and you can sponsor us here...