Silver Lady

But feeling like a fraud!

So I might be a little envious of everyone going off on holiday, but one of the advantages to staying at home is that parkrun is quieter, which is just how I like it! The ghastly wet and somewhat humid weather helped in putting some people off (Al included) and the inaugural run of another local parkrun took a lot of our regular runners away, leaving just over fifty of us to brave it up our infamous hill all three and a half times!

Regularly running the same course, with by and large the same group of people, week on week you get to know and recognise faces, and you also get to know who is faster than you because you're either following, being overtaken or in some instances lapped by them on a regular basis, and it can throw your mind into disarray if for some reason you manage to overtake them. Today was just such a day. I set off too quickly (again) but managed to maintain my pace and was running well when (with possibly about a lap and a half to go) I overtook one of the aforementioned runners who is always in front of me!

A short way after it dawns on me that there is only one female runner in front of me that I know of and that perhaps today the silver medal position is mine... but I am also confused as to where the fast runner I've overtaken is and find myself having a sports commentator style dialogue in my head (please tell me I'm not alone in this!) where they have the advantage of being able to see what is going on behind me and are busy discussing the fact that I've taken on the race too early and there is no way I can run it from the front for the rest of the remaining distance, my only hope being if I've got a big finish in me. I haven't and am on the final flat stretch before the final hill when she comes past and I find myself calling out "I've been waiting for you!".

What happened next was both one of the nicest and inadvertently frustrating things to have happened at parkrun, she slowed down and coached me through the last three hundred metres, encouraging me all the way to dig deep and go for it, and let me finish in front of her.... which was just lovely and I WAS the second female to cross the line, but I know that really I was third and am only masquerading as today's silver lady.

Finishing this far up the field is entirely dependent on who else turns up (last week I was eleventh) and I did have a horrid thought for a moment that what if by some coincidence she has only ever come on weeks when there have other faster runners and I stole her opportunity to come second.... but a quick look at the results page and I can relax - she's been first on a number of occasions and was over three and a half minutes off her PB this morning which is why I was anywhere near her!

BUT the other the thing the summer holidays are good for is rewarding us stay at homers with weekly parkrun points and I may not have won fairly on the track today but I am top of the female points table! Only another forty eight weeks to maintain my position - can't help but feel I might have taken the lead too early here too!

M - 661
HM - 217
Distance covered              3.1 miles
Total Distance covered  156.6 miles