#GoJo

How can it be that time of year already?!

Sometimes things that I know in one sense to be true just don't compute in others.  For example, I know that I am forty four yet find it inconceivable that it's thirty years since Frankie Goes to Hollywood were at number one with the Power of Love, or that it's the fourteenth of December but am completely unprepared for it being the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards tonight.  This is something that I associate with Christmas and the end of the Year, and I'm nowhere near ready enough to acknowledge that it IS almost Christmas and just over two weeks until the end of the year! How did that happen?!

But ready or not, this evening it is, and along with it the opportunity to vote for Jo Pavey, fellow forty something, mother of two, parkrunner! (Who just happens to be the European 10,000m champion and the oldest female to ever win Gold at the championships).

Tonight, competing against golfing, footballing and formula one hero's (to name but a few) the call on social media is to rouse the running community into action and vote for Jo.  Certainly her achievements are remarkable and yet at the same time understated.  I don't know if she is more worthy a winner than any of the other contenders, nor with my half hearted attempt at cross training and doing my exercises do I profess to know any of what she has gone through other than running 5K around a local park at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning! Yet I hope that we can stand up for all that she represents and show the big money sports what we community runners are made of!

There was a link to a blog in the parkrun news letter this week highlighting Jo's case, and suggesting ways in which we can help spur people into action.  For someone who struggles at times with sending yet another day's link to my blog onto your Facebook or Twitter feed, the thought that I am supposed to be doing so at least three times a day, and then raising the tempo of my activity even further as the start of the show approaches is somewhat alien to me! But it may give some insight into the workings of social media and why my half hearted attempts to include hash tags at the end of my links posted on Twitter have by and large gone unseen. Despite Marathon Man's valiant attempt to raise my profile a couple of weeks ago, and introduce me to the whole notion of a hash tag, I have only acquired two new followers on Twitter - thank you Etsy Favouriter and Westival Saviour - but as you were already readers I'm not sure I can count it as a success!

Perhaps I'm missing the point regarding getting myself 'out there' but I just can't imagine sending out information on the same topic three times in the same day! Perhaps the thirty years that has passed since I was going to Scout Disco's has rendered me part of a different generation or perhaps I'm happier without the pressure of thinking I have to make this run related if I'm including a link after my daily ramblings! So call it old school, or social media naivety but this is it.. my one and only call to arms... for mothers, for older women, for parkrunners, and for sheer guts and determination VOTE FOR JO or should I say #GoJo!

M - 513
Brighton Half - 70
Glasgow Half - 294
Total Distance covered      426.5 miles