Penultimate Post Provides a parkrun PB!

Hello! This morning I dithered around before pulling myself together and cycling down to Platt Fields Park for my second South Manchester parkrun. The weather was perfect, overcast and quite cool. I shed my waterproof jacket (lesson learned) and joined the crowd. There were pacers this week, ranging from 20 minutes to 30. I decided to stick with the 27 minute pacer as my last 5k was 27:54 and I felt I should have improved in the last couple of weeks. It was a pretty good run, I felt better for knowing the route, not being too hot and being able to focus on keeping up with someone, rather than thinking about my legs. I picked up the pace a bit at the end and started to feel sick, so a bit of a mixed run! The results came in and I managed a PB of 27:05, hooray! It's the last day of Juneathon tomorrow, so I'll write a bit more about how I've found it then. The Tour de France started today, so I'm off to see how that's going. Bye!

Quack. These guys thought I had some bread for them in my bag. Sorry dudes.

parkrun participation!

Last night I checked out the MMU degree shows with my guy and some pals. We had a jolly time, it's always nice to see the work students have made and to have a catch up. The new art school building is very impressive, much nicer than the dingy old building that was there when I did my Masters! Afterwards we went to the pub and had a few pints, but I was conscious of running a 5k in the morning so was eager to get home to eat and get some sleep!

Cheets.

The Bird.

The new art school buildings. Futuristic!

I managed to talk my pal Nick (available for all your film and photography needs, plug plug plug) into doing the parkrun with me, so we met at 8.15 in the morning on our bikes in the cold drizzle and cycled down the Fallowfield Loop to Platt Fields Park and waited around nervously for the run to start. There were quite a few fit and healthy folk around and I spotted a few familiar faces from run club. The race started and Nick sped off into the distance. So began a mental battle for me, half saying, "my legs are like lead, so heavy, I can't do this", the other saying, "yes you can, you know you can, keep going!". The sun made an appearance and it was pretty perfect running conditions, nice and cool but bright. At least it would have been if I wasn't wearing a waterproof! When will I learn? Anyway, I managed a pretty decent pace the whole way round and sped up a little at the end for a strongish finish. It felt like a lot longer than 5k somehow, but I ruddy well did it! I thought I'd taken over half an hour, but on checking the results a pleasant surprise, I managed 27:54 and was 40th woman! Plenty of room for improvement and maybe next time I won't have 3 pints of ale the night before.

Pre run face

Turned out nice!

Post-run faces

It's Nellybob to you.

Saturday Sunshine

This morning I cycled to work in the glorious sunshine. Cycling from Chorlton isn't really a challenge as it's fairly flat. The problem is the traffic when you hit town. Busy busy!

New Vans to compliment Gino.

I printed up a couple of custom baby bibs and posted out an owl print commission.

Soya ink Risograph print on recycled card. Yum!

Oh, did I mention I personalise baby wear?!

I thought I'd put down some of my goals for the month, as writing them down in public might help me to achieve them!

Firstly, join my local running club, The Chorlton Runners. A combination of natural shyness and laziness has prevented me from going before now. I will conquer my fear tomorrow!

Secondly, do a Park Run. See above paragraph for excuses. Add to that working a lot of Saturdays means that it hasn't been easy to get to. Until next week when I will be taking part, no matter what! It's at 9 a.m at Platt Fields Park, so I should just have enough time to complete the run and cycle to work if needs be. I've just registered, so there's no turning back now!

My work-related goal is to have good photographs of my main products to start a website revamp by the end of the month. I made a start on this yesterday.

So now they are here in black and white, feel free to berate me if I fail!