Week 12: Saturday

The shortest day

The stupid things I do for Smashrun badges. Bleurgh.

Smashrun has badges for both the longest and shortest days. To earn them, you have to run at both sunrise and sunset on the day itself – that is, you have to start before and end after. On June 20th I earned the longest day badge by running 5km from 0436-0503, and 2km from 2118-2128. And on December 21st, well…

Sunrise

3km from 0757-0814. Cold. A bit windy. Worst thing about it was how ruinously heavy I felt after a phenomenal feed on Friday afternoon/evening, ‘cos we had a friend over and Helen fancied putting on a feast.

Parkrun 393

Broadwater, again. Two weeks in a row feels really odd at the moment. Ridiculously muddy, strong headwinds, and frequently single file. Frankly I didn’t make an effort at all. Consequently it was my slowest Parkrun since October 2023, and that was in terrible weather and I was pacing a neighbour on their first ever Parkrun.

Couldn’t care less though. This was not deliberate conversational pace, it was just ticking off another Parkrun en route to a mini-milestone.

Sunset

I really don’t like running in the afternoon. But badges aren’t going to earn themselves. So hell, here’s 3km from 1548 to 1604. Having knocked out the 8km in the morning and then been out and about and doing chores and stuff in the meantime, I’m surprised that this was my fastest run of the 3. Nothing like as fast as yesterday, but still, 5:33/km will do.

And, of course, I got the bloody badge. So I don’t have to do this ever again.