Maria Runs - Maria Runs

Muggy runs

So, suddenly after getting back from holiday, it seemed like summer had arrived. Well, the warmth anyway. We arrived home on Sunday morning (I will get around to a recap of the safari because it was pretty special, but that may take a while)- our flight got in around 5am so we were home by 6.30. Because there is only one hour of time difference, there isn’t any jet lag, which after a 12 hour flight was new to me. We had a very efficient day doing lots of unpacking, but I didn’t really fancy a run that day.

My running since then has picked up:

Monday- A loop that turned out to be 4 miles- it was so hot I had to keep on stopping to cool down, as a lot of it wasn’t in shade.

Tuesday- Club run- we had the most awful violent thunderstorm at work, so I thought that our planned 8 mile route would be changed to something shorter, but over this way there was no thunder so we did a hilly 8.3 mile route (normally reserved for a Sunday morning longer run)- it was so sticky and sweaty, and we all had flies stuck to us by the end. Good, but super tough.

Wednesday- Walk after work.

Thursday- Attempted a different route which I thought would be shorter than my Monday route- turned out to be 4.3 miles so a bit longer! Again, very hot.

Friday- After work I did a lot of unpacking, collected post from our old place, popped to town to spend my birthday vouchers (got a Sonos for my office), caught up on work, and all before Gogglebox!

Saturday- A mile run from town, a mainly walk with sprinting thrown in tail run at parkrun, and a walk into town later on.

Sunday- 9 miles in the rain. I tried to use mapometer to sort out a route, but as I went off road around the lakes for a bit, it got confused, so in the end I had to loop around a bit more to get the miles in. I have a 10 mile race in a few weeks time so wanted to make sure I was OK doing that distance still. The rain was refreshing and luckily didn’t get too heavy. We did a bit more unpacking and were pretty much done! Not too bad at all.

Monday- Little walk to the shops after work, avoiding the showers.

Tuesday- Shorter club run. This was fantastic- we were allowed to run in the grounds of Hatfield House as most of the people had passes, and it was lovely to be off road and away from the traffic. The scenery was stunning too- the sun came out and at some points you are running through woodland, but other times it is huge fields of wheat, almost shimmering in the sunlight.

Wednesday- I finally found a loop that is just over 3 miles long! That is the minimum distance that I think is worth a hair wash, and I am not really keen on out and back routes (plus they look so boring on Strava) so I was keen to find a loop. Although I do enjoy running, sometimes if I am tired after work or have lots to do, the temptation is to cut it short, whereas on a loop, once I am on it I keep going (even though I know I could turn around). It doesn’t quite make sense, but I prefer it. Anyway, it was sunny and hot when I left, and as I turned one corner I could see the most enormous black cloud- luckily I was home before it emptied!

Today I have booked onto body pump- this is the first time since I fell over in the half marathon and hurt my back. It has seemed fine, so I am hoping it will be alright although I am going to use very light weights. Fingers crossed!

How have you been coping in this muggy weather? Are you good at finding new walking, cycling or running routes or do you stick to the same ones?

Tail running around the lake

So this weekend my car was being serviced (over in St Albans) so when I booked the date I had offered to tail run, as I had to drop it off at 8.30am, a mile from the parkrun start. Perfect. I thought I would potter around in town after (partly why I thought I would tail run as I didn’t fancy wandering around town all sweaty) but it turned out my parents were back from holiday the day before, so Dad said he would do that parkrun, the drive me home for breakfast at theirs. Even better.

It was a rather sticky morning, and by the time I arrived at the start my glasses were fogging up from the warmth- not sure why that happens as they are fine when I run, but as soon as I stop they fog up. Anyway, I collected my fitbit tail runner vest (more like a dress, you’ll see) and chatted to one of the scanners who I work with. Then over her shoulder I saw my dad- they had been in Namibia for over 3 weeks (before our house move) so it was great to see him. My brother had also come along for the run, so we had a chat before the run started. There was another tail runner (tomorrow is the St Albans half marathon so I think they had a lot of offers for volunteers)- I quite like that, it’s happened at Panshanger before and means you can chat and not impose on the last few runners as some of them don’t like you hovering behind them.

There was a big turnout (343 runners) including this person wearing a full on lion costume (in support of the remain campaign). Much respect in that heat!

From their facebook page.

As we started it occurred to me that it was going to be a bit harder, because this route goes along the path to the lake, three laps of the lake, then back along the park. I’ve only even done it at Panshanger which is one big loop. Keeping track of the back runners would be more challenging. One guy told us he had MS and that if he overheated his legs would go numb, so we were not to worry if he was on the ground so long as he was talking. Another guy (who is one of the RD’s) was coming back from a knee operation so wanted to walk it in under 50 minutes. He thought he would be with us for the whole time, but in fact he went a long way ahead as there was a lady with her eight year old son (we learnt he was eight as she was shouting at him after a few hundred metres things like “you are so unfit for an 8 year old, you should be able to run more than 100m/ if you don’t do any exercise you’ll get fat… later someone heard her say “no pudding for a week”- that poor boy is not going to have fond memories of running…)- he was struggling and kept stopping, so we had to stop a bit of a way back because it was a little awkward.

We chatted to the marshals briefly on our way past (it was strange thinking “we will see you twice more”)- one guy was great and cheered on “the fitbits” each time we walked past!

On our first lap my dad and brother went past on their second (or possibly third). I did think then that perhaps a one lap course has advantages. It was nice to look around the lake and see a stream of runners, but as we started our second most of the runners were peeling off for the home straight. On the second lap we came across the guy with MS, who was sat down. He was worried he was at the back, but we reassured him we were only on our second, and soon after he overtook us and headed to the finish. Then the lady and her son decided to stop, so then we had to find the next final runner- he was right at the other end of the lake so in our final lap we had a bit of a speedy run to catch him up. We walked the rest of the way together, and he was very pleased to finish with 49.08- well under his 50 minute target.

See! Look at my vest- more like a dress!

After that we headed home for pancakes cooked by my mum (Andy drove around to meet us there), and a look at their amazing safari photos before I went to collect my car.

I was having a look and the last time I ran at St Albans was March 2015, when I was marathon training- Dad picked me up, we ran parkrun and then I ran home from there. It was the first parkrun I did, and it was my only one until Panshanger started up, so it was good to go back there. I think I should go in the autumn sometime and see if I can get close to my pb, as it is a faster course, but most weeks my local ones are going to win out I think.

(That was run number 71 for me, 21st time of volunteering)

Did you like exercising when you were a child? Do you have a junior parkrun near you? Apparently there is a group of people keen to set one up, but because of all the parks being used for football on Sunday mornings they are finding it hard to find a suitable location.

The house move

The house move feels like it has been in the works for so long. Before Christmas we said that in the new year we would talk about moving house, and at the start of January we put our house up for sale to see if it would sell, and go from there. It turned out that the housing market was very competitive (good for us as sellers, not so good for us as buyers). We sold very quickly, and then began the painful process of trying to find somewhere to buy. Around here all the estate agents host open house sessions (we did for our sale, as that was what they all said they would do)- a couple of hours, 15 minute slots, as many buyers in that time. Once we were looking, it turned out that often the slots would be full on the day of the house going on the market. After a few open houses, one rejected offer, a day seeing lots of houses and none of them being quite what we were after, we struck lucky. In half term a house came up which looked perfect. We rang up and the owners weren’t doing an open house, and even better we could see it on the Friday- if it had not been half term I would not have been able to go. It was perfect, we put in our offer at about 2pm and then had a very nervous few hours before the call at 6.30 confirmed that our offer had been accepted!

Our old house

Then of course came all the boring legal and logistical bits. Our chain was short (our buyers were first time buyers moving from home, and the people we were buying from were moving to an empty property) but of course things were not simple. Originally our moving date was the 12th of May (so we could then book our South Africa trip) but it got pushed back a few times. Anyway, it’s all done now!

As I mentioned before, I found Mary’s blog post very helpful. We had been given some boxes so we packed a lot of things away and left them in Andy’s parent’s spare room. I had a notebook to record what was in each box. We sorted out the internet so we knew we would be having only a few days without it, changed addresses on some things, and set up the mail re-direct (although I didn’t realise it took 5 working days, and only set it up the weekend before so a few things slipped through). We had hired a moving company, so they had given us many more boxes and we ended up stacking them in the garage (and me parking outside) because in our old house once a few boxes were packed there was no way to get around them.

The movers were meant to arrive “from 8am”- so of course we had a late night and an early start frantically doing the last few things (including finding late on Monday night that the plumber who had fixed a small issue with the heating the previous week had knocked all of the Christmas decorations our of reach in the little attic space- we only have a small ladder so in the end had to move a chest of drawers for Andy to stand on so he could get up there and reach them down), but then they actually turned up at 9am. They were really good- they had to carry all the furniture downstairs, plus any boxes we had left up there. They took apart the bed but somehow managed to keep our wardrobe together and got it down the stairs without any of them falling to their deaths- there were some tense moments!). I hovered about with the hoover- I was shocked at how much dust there was behind some of our furniture! Once it was all in the van we had to hang about a bit as they were ready but we could not collect the keys straight away. We headed off to get the keys and they met us at our new house- when we arrived they had already unloaded the plants which was very efficient.

Then the fun of deciding where things were to go started. We had decided all boxes for downstairs could go in the dining room, and all the upstairs boxes went into one of the spare rooms. The movers put the bed back together which was brilliant- when we moved into our first place we had a lot of Ikea furniture to build and one of my main memories of that day was us building the bed late at night so we had somewhere to sleep. At one point Andy was sorting the garden and I was just waiting, so I went around and checked that all the lights worked (another Mary tip)- I found that 1- they love their colour changing bulbs, and 2- there was no switch for the bathroom (and we hunted high and low, in the hall, in the airing cupboard…). It turned out that the bathroom has a sensor, only activated when it is dark, which is rather annoying as it switches off after a couple of minutes- not great when you are having a shower and not near the sensor! The bathroom lights are also multicoloured and colour changing- something we will change quite soon.

Our dining room- looking much better now as most of the boxes are behind and at least we can sit at the table.

The movers finally left at 4pm- we had not stopped all day so had a break for some belated lunch, before trying to unpack the essentials. I had sorted an “open first” box but then with the movers unloading everything it took us a while to find it! I had packed some teabags to last us the first few days, and I am very glad I did as we didn’t find the tea straight away. We went out for dinner later, as we did not fancy cooking!

Our back garden! It’s been lovely to come back from a run and cool down here- our old place had a garden but you had to go through the garage so we didn’t use it much.

The next couple of days were not very productive as I had meetings after work both days, and then we were off on holiday, but the Sunday when we came home was brilliant (only one hour time difference so no jet lag)- we unpacked so many boxes, put the Christmas decorations in the loft, emptied our suitcases, set up my desk in my office and arranged the kitchen. I’ve been ticking off the boxes as we unpack them (I get huge satisfaction from ticking off lists) but we sometimes do forget.

There are many boxes still to unpack here too, but at least I can get to my desk now.

I love the willow tree in our garden. But we also have two (including one massive) leylandii trees which will need to go as they block out so much light.

I now have a whole host of new running routes too, but that is for another post!

How many times have to had to move house? We moved once when I was 12, then when Andy and I moved in together we moved out of our parents homes so that was fairly easy. I lived at home during uni so I really did not have much experience of it.

Cape Town!

So we had a bit of a stressful week- moving house on a Tuesday is not the easiest of days, needing work things right up to the last minute, and the day after. It was made a bit more stressful because on Friday night after work we were flying to Cape Town! It was a bit of a last minute trip, as Andy needed to go there to meet some colleagues. As our move was meant to be the 12th of May, and he was able to combine the trip with some leave (if he wanted to, so I could join him), we booked it for half term (only at the end of April I think- very last minute for us!). Then our move was moved back one week (20th), and then again to the following Tuesday. We could not have moved much later! It meant we packed as much of our holiday suitcases before we moved, so we were not frantically trying to find things in boxes. Although my little tube of germoline went missing, and at Heathrow my bag was not accepted in the x-ray machine as there was something there. Turns out the tube was right in the bottom of my rucksack- no idea when I put it there!

Anyway, the flight was really good – it was 12 hours overnight but we had the exit rows which meant lots of leg room. It didn’t take off until 10pm, and after a busy week we were both shattered and went to sleep straight away. It is only one hour time difference which really helped- no jet lag!

After a quick change in our B&B, we were off to Table Mountain. You could hike, but it looked steep and we didn’t have that long, so we got the cable car. We had a long walk around at the top, admiring the views.

After heading back down we were being picked up by Andy’s boss, who was taking us (along with other people from his company) out to dinner at a vineyard. We arrived just as the sun was setting- it was stunning.

On Sunday morning we had booked a tour because I really wanted to see the penguins, having never seen them in the wild before. The tour went to a few places along the coast, including the Cape of Good Hope. The coastline was beautiful and dramatic- a bit like Big Sur in California.

Before finally getting to Boulder’s Beach and the penguins!

I could have watched them for hours- I love how they waddle along. Our tour then took us back to Cape Town, where after a little rest we headed out for some dinner. I did wonder about veggie options as they do seem to love their meat, but we found a nice burger bar that had a few homemade veggie patties, and lots of salad options too. We shared guacamole for starter which was freshly made and mashed at our table in front of us.

We shared this brownie for dessert- it was very good!

On Monday Andy was popping in to work so I went on the Big Red Bus tour. It is a hop on hop off bus, and one route was a loop around the bottom of Table Mountain, along the coast and to the waterfront.

I got off at one of the beautiful beaches, but I got a bit accosted by people trying to sell me their artwork (which was impressive, but I wasn’t going to buy any of it)- it reminded me a bit of Turkey as the people were a bit more pushy than I am used to. I rode the bus the rest of the way, looking for where we should get off later when Andy joined me.

I had a lovely wander around the V&A waterfront, and a very good lunch.

Veggie and hummus sandwich, and rooibos tea of course! I then headed back, as Andy was on his way back from meeting people at work (they had been out for lunch) and so we did the bus tour again, this time getting off at a later beach and walking along as the sun was setting.

The next morning we were up early to catch a flight to Jo’burg, but I will save that for another post…

Packing and parkrunning

Are a bit of a tiring combination!

This weekend was the inaugural Ellenbrook Fields parkrun (look it up if you are in Hertfordshire)- our running club had a lot to do with setting it up, particularly our super coach Carrie. A lot of our club were going to be there, whereas often there are only a few of us at parkrun each week. It was novel for me because the start is jut over a mile away, so I could run there instead of driving. I got up a bit later, pottered about and then jogged up to the start. I wore my hat because it had been raining, but I didn’t need it in the end. There were loads of people swarming towards the start- I knew it would be busy as word seems to spread quickly through our running community- there are lots of running clubs nearby, and plenty of towns with clubs but no parkruns (Welwyn, Ware, Harpenden to name a few), plus they had mentioned it a lot of times at Panshanger as the Panshanger team had mentored the Ellenbrook team and been involved in helping with the start up too.

Our club had a banner out near the start. We love a bit of extra support.

I was there at about 10 to in the end, so had a quick chat with a few of the marshals and runners from our club, before Carrie did a super welcome speech from a fence (as it’s so flat there- no nice hill for her to stand on).

Then we were off! I realised right away I had started a bit too far back, but I wasn’t going for any pb (of course the first official one would be my pb for that parkrun)- I quite liked the idea of beating my time from last week but as I had already run up (and used my Garmin) I could not really work that out. Anyway, the course starts with a little loop (around a km I think), and so during that I took my time overtaking a few people at a time. It was so lovely because I knew most of the marshals (by name too, not just by sight) and so they were cheering all of the OH runners on by name too. I saw a few OH runners up ahead so ran to catch up, and the after chatting for a bit heard someone else call my name- it was someone I used to run at Sweatshop with- I don’t think we had seen each other for over a year, so it was good to have a little chat. Once the first little loop is done, you do the first part of it again before carrying on in a much larger loop. By then it had thinned out and so I could focus on where was best to run (the ground is a bit uneven). I may be biased but the best marshal (the lovely Donna, my run leader) was yelling at the top of her lungs at around the half way point. Her opinion (which I agree with)- no point being a marshal unless you’re going to encourage people on. She certainly did!

Nearly both feet off the ground I think!

Then it was through the cow field, and along a very rutted bit of grass, where I caught up with someone I know a bit through the facebook DRYT (Did You Run Today?) group, and Strava, so we said a quick “hello”. Then (passing two more lovely OH marshals) it was onto the old taxiway (Ellenbrook fields used to be an old airfield) to the finish. I ended up running next to a guy who chatted to me for a bit, and then up ahead I could see a few more OH runners (one of them is a very fast runner so I did wonder about my time at that point) so I decided to try and speed up a bit to catch them. I could not quite manage it, and crossed the line 2 seconds behind one of them (and 10 seconds behind the speedy one) with a time of 27.52. I am rather pleased with that- I have only run quicker than that once this year (my pb at Panshanger) and because of the crowds at the start I wasn’t pushing it as much as I could.

Look at the huge queues for scanning! There ended up being 273 runners, not too shabby for the first event. The tail runner came in at 41 minutes too, so a very speedy one (I think I have been around 55 minutes for my tail running).

I stayed around until the end, chatting to people from my club, and cheering in the other runners. One person gave the RD feedback about there not being any km markers (I had wondered but I also thought perhaps they were there and I didn’t notice them- Carrie said that they didn’t get any as they are not included, but they are in talks with the owners of the land to have permanent ones- I think I have seen pictures from a few National Trust ones which have them, and I think it’s a fab idea. When I decided to head home (packing loomed) I passed Neil and Eleanor Draper (they are from Garden City Runners and I often see them at Panshanger- they were interviewed on marathon talk before – lovely and inspirational people)- so I asked them how they had found it they had really enjoyed the route which was good to hear. It’s strange as since running around those fields with Sweatshop it’s one of my favourite summer running places, but I suppose lots of people still don’t know about it.

Also, I love looking at the results, and it was great to see that it was parkrun number 1 for so many people- hopefully one of many! That was my 8th different parkrun venue (70th run)- I heard someone say that once you have been to 20 different ones you count as a parkrun tourist! A few more to go then! Although there is one at Stevenage starting next weekend, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get up there until July as I am either away or volunteering at St Albans, Panshanger and Ellenbrook. Busy times ahead!

So, onto the packing. We’re moving house on Tuesday this week, and some boxes were delivered on Friday so that was basically our weekend planned for us! We had packed up a few boxes before, but had soon run out of space to store the packed boxes. Yesterday I parked my car outside so we have spent the day packing, and putting the boxes into the garage (I normally keep my car in the garage). We had to pop out to get a few bits of food for the next couple of days, and I bought us a cinnamon swirl from Starbucks to share as an afternoon treat after a lot of packing. This was very much needed- perhaps running 5 miles was not the best preparation. Mary’s page about moving has been very useful and I’ve been writing all the boxes down in a note book (although we are getting a company to actually move the things), and we are now up to box number 40. How do we have this much stuff? And where did it all fit? I’ve also been trying to do things like change my address for a few places- we have signed up to the Royal Mail re-direction as I am sure things will slip through the net.

Any moving tips?