Some people celebrate New Year by staying up late, drinking champagne, and watching fireworks. This year I thought I’d do something different – join the 250 parkrun club. And not only join it – but be the 6th person and 1st lady to do so. Way back in the dim and distant past I believe I was one of the first ten people to join the 100 club (so last year!) and have the personalised fleece to prove it. Not many of those around. However, Gill Wilson got there before me. I’m never going to win anything for being good at running, so to be first in some way is a major achievement for me! I also like being rewarded for turning up a lot!
Christmas time means extra parkruns and the timings worked out rather well for me. I did my 250th run on NYE. This was a Saturday, also known as parkrunday. I felt that people may be less inclined to celebrate in the morning of NYD, so invited friends and family to join me for this run. Lots did, including several Ranelagh friends who don’t often grace the scene of Bushy parkrun! Some of us ran together, including PSH who was ‘papping’ me all the way round. The results were some truly hideous running pictures but a nice record of the event. Before the run Suzan presented me with a fantadtic gift to commemorate my 250 runs – a personalised parkrun calendar. She had collaborated behind my back with David to get enough photos! It’s fantastic and I was truly touched. After the run we celebrated with champagne and cake, followed by tea in the cafe. My nephew, who is looking forward to his first ever Junior parkrun next month when he turns 4, gave me a huge chocolate medal!
A very important person missing from the Saturday celebrations was Sharon who unfortunately had to be at work. So I thought the best plan was to celebrate twice! I only had to wait 24 hours for more. The start of the run on NYD was very exciting when Andy announced my achievement and Ray presented me with my beautiful shiny new shirt. (Which he’d adapted specially to fit me!). Of course I had to change it to it there and then! I had a a great run on Sunday, nearly 2 minutes faster than Saturday and under 25 minutes. Yay. Lots of lovely comments on the way round plus some sarcastic ones too, along the lines of whether all the gold was weighing me down…
After the run we had more cake and champagne, followed by another trip to the cafe. No triple for me, I decided 251 parkruns are enough. Until next week that is!
Yay for Bling Bling Bangham
xxxx