Easter bunnies!

Basingstoke parkrun received a visit from the Easter bunnies this weekend!  Two unnamed individuals donated eggs, large and small, to turn the 203rd B'stoke parkrun into a very fast Easter Egg Hunt!    I have to admit that I was neither fast enough nor observant enough to find any eggs today.  It took all my concentration just to keep on going.  And really I should have stopped, would have stopped had not my oldest child (volunteering today) hurled abuse at me as a passed the finish point after completing the first one and a half laps.  Somehow I forgot to stop, and by the time I remembered I was nearly at the end!  I did stop briefly to see if a lady who had tripped badly was OK, but help had already been summoned, so I ploughed on.

It had not been a good run.  After my nasty fall on Mothering Sunday I've had various niggles that I've been trying to ignore.  I come from a generation that were told to 'run through' the pain at school.   I am competitive by nature, so when a friend caught up with me on Tennis Court Hill pushing his 3 year old son in a buggy I was mortified!  I did put on a bit of speed and pulled ahead for a few seconds, but I was to pay for it later.  My right hamstring was screaming at me.  It continued to shout at me for the rest of the run.  I finished in a disappointing 24mins 57 seconds.   As always, after picking myself slowly up from the ground, I jogged back to meet my youngest son and encourage him over the final half mile.  He is only 7 years old, and although he runs all the way around, I think he loses concentration.  Certainly when I meet up with him at the end of the race he has bags of energy left and we see how many people we can overtake.  There is always a lovely cheer for Freddy as he comes to the finish and he always has a huge smile on his face!  This week he got a new PB too!  He took 1 second off his previous time to finish in 35mis 05 secs.

Maybe it is because we get such a great deal from parkrun that a lot of us are more than happy to give something back.  The generosity of parkrunners never ceases to amaze me!  We've had medals donated for our Christmas day run, and one very kind runner who waited at the finish line for a younger runner (aged 7) to finish on that day and give him his medal (100 medals had been donated, but 130 runners had turned up on the day). Parkrun certainly fosters a great feeling of community and camaraderie.  The support and encouragement shown to runners at all levels is exceptional.  It seems incredible that I have been doing parkrun for less than a year, it has become such an important part of my life.  What on Earth did I do on Saturday mornings before?

Now, is some generous soul could please donate a new pair of fully functioning legs to me, I'd be a very happy lady!