Saturday is what day?

Saturday is ParkRun Day!

As a coach, I tell my athletes, 'listen to your body'. I advise them to rest and recover after tough training sessions; to have 'down weeks' in a marathon training plan, to most certainly take a break from running if struggling with, or showing signs of a 'niggle' or injury...

So why is it that despite being well practised in giving such advice, and becoming frustrated when athletes don't listen and just insist on 'ploughing on' because they thing they can 'run it off'...do I sometimes not take heed of my own advice myself?!

If you have read my earlier posts, you will know that I paid the price for this and had a bit of a setback when trying to do too much too soon after 'major foot surgery'...but I'm back on track! I've done as advised: stepped right back, done lots of cross training and am building up gradually...so today (and this sounds crazy as someone who should have been running a 20 mile race tomorrow as part of my build up to London 2025) I ran a ParkRun!

We had a couple of days away (to take our dog Max to the beach...and what a lovely time he had running around there!) and this morning, we visited Sandringham; what a beautiful place it is. The ParkRun is a two lap course around woodland trails and in this morning's lovely frosty sunshine, it was the perfect place to try my first post-op continuous 5k.

...I loved it. I took it really steady; started near the back and just enjoyed the scenery. My husband 'park walked' with Max (because Max got so excited at the start that we just needed him to calm down a little, which he did after half a mile!) and we then enjoyed a post-ParkRun coffee in the grounds of Sandringham.

So it IS worth listening to advice...my recovery will be a slow process but it is positive and I will get there much faster than I would have done if I didn't listen!

So if you are a parkrunner too; I hope you too had a great run today and I look forward to letting you know how things go over the next few weeks!