Addiction

Really?! This is my vice of choice?!

Arriving at the park on Christmas morning, a friend of ours greeted us saying "Morning Addicts!" I liked this, it amused me, it made me smile, but it didn't however fully ring true until today!

Snow, rain and freezing temperatures overnight meant that when we got up this morning there was a large question mark over this morning's run, but refusing to believe the inevitable we got up and ready whilst we awaited the news from parkrun HQ...

First up HMG and I had to make a decision about our pre parkrun warm up - not happening! HMG preferring to be stuck with IT Band issues to conquer rather than a broken leg! Can't really argue with that but still we held on to the hope that somehow conditions would be different in the park, or that the course could be gritted sufficiently as it was the other week. Not so.  Sheet ice on all paths and car park areas meant that they had to cancel.  I know this isn't a decision they will have taken lightly, but I was gutted.

Earlier posts on facebook meant that I knew there was one other option several miles away and for a few fleeting minutes my hopes soared as we considered the option of trying to make it there in time, but in the end decided that it was too close a call. Devastated for the second time inside five minutes, made even worse when fellow parkrunner who had made it, reported a delayed start!

The reaction to this news was met with differing responses: I was inconsolable. Before you picture some sort of snivelling wreck I wasn't actually crying, but that cheery disposition I am supposedly working on was no where to be seen; C was disappointed and extremely fidgety for a while; Al less so! (If he'd run this morning, and did the double parkrun on New Year's Day, the second of those two run's would be his fiftieth - now it will be his forty ninth, and I'm not sure he's going to think that worth getting out of bed for!); SisterofMG750, when she arrived, was both relieved at not having had to run, and sceptical as to why I would have been disappointed, it was after all only a normal parkrun that I was missing.....

But it didn't feel that way! I hated not being there. If I'm at home, I don't miss parkrun, and I'm rarely not at home and then only for run related excursions! I'm not sure that this is normal behaviour, and what I had thought was just habit, is beginning to look more like addiction!

Thankfully I am in some extremely good company! Only commenting the other day on how fortunate we are to have friends who turn up week in week out, when the average number of runs per person attending Dewsbury parkrun is around six, it would appear that rather than being proud to be part of the parkrun faithful we're at risk of needing a support group!

On the plus side a few days off is possibly what the doctor would have ordered - if he'd been consulted!

M -500
Brighton Half - 57
Glasgow Half - 281
Total Distance covered  - 440 miles