What's your story?

As many of my running friends did, I completed the HBF Run for a Reason on Sunday just gone. I must admit it was a lot more enjoyable than I had expected it to be, after swearing off mass participation, close the city type runs after my one and only City to Surf experience in 2010 I was expecting the worst. By the worst I mean roads congested with people in onesies & tutus, zigging and zagging around walkers who seem to have time travelled. That sort of thing. Sure I saw a bit of that but not nearly as bad as I thought. I managed to arrive at the finish in one hour, thirty three minutes and five seconds. I'm happy with that as at about the 6km mark I was feeling like I would be out there all day. In fact I told myself several times that I was cooked, and was only going to get slower from here. It was only when some parkrun friends came alongside at the 7k mark and started talking to me that I got my act together(many thanks Theresa & Ann). I ran with them for a while but I couldn't keep up, though I managed to keep them in sight until they entered Gloucester park. Why does our self talk, our inner voice give us so much grief, is it creating excuses for not reaching goals? Is it our subconscious trying to excuse us from doing the work we need to do, because after all these things are hard, thats the whole point of doing them. I sure don't know, when I do I'll let you know, but I do know one thing, what we tell ourselves has a massive effect on our success or otherwise. So try and keep your story positive. My next challenge is the Perth Marathon relay, then the Masters Athletics club marathon. I'll be stepping up the training for both but hopefully I'll be stepping up the frequency of these posts, if not for my readers(should that be plural?) then at least for my own continued motivation. I'm also thinking about the possibility of a podcast because I really do love the sound of my own voice, but I'll need some help with that one. Watch this space.

The Magic of parkrun

So although plenty seems to be happening, most of it is not sitting at a keyboard writing down my thoughts. Which seems like a shame because I reckon I've been having some rippers. Can I think of any of them right now, not one. Well thats not quite true, I have a couple that will probably come up during this post but if they don't, trust me, they were off the scale brilliant. Anyway I've been wanting to write about the magic of parkrun, a free weekly timed 5km run at a park near you. And although I don't believe in anything remotely mystical or magical, unicorns or fairies, there is something quite magic that happens when these groups get together every Saturday morning at 8am. I first heard about park run through my mate Jeremy Savage's posts on Facebook, I'd met Jeremy through riding bikes and he's been mentioned on this blog before in reasonably glowing terms. Jeremy loves parkrun so much that he got involved in setting up a new park run at Canning River, then one in Gosnells. I started going along about a year ago when Jeremy was involved in starting up Canning River, it's hard to explain but the vibe is so good at these events, the encouragement, the general feeling of a group of people doing something they really enjoy. I usually attract my fair share of encouragement wherever I go, mainly because I'm a big guy having a crack, but the encouragement I see going to everybody, the applause as someone finishes, whether first or last is quite amazing. Now it seems like there are park runners wherever you go, at events all over the state, high fiving and supporting each other on to greater heights of running stupidity and achievement. I still don't know why it works and probably don't need to, but I'm glad it does. So for the moment it's the only magic I believe in.