The Other Side of the World

After a few failed attempts/applications, I was finally given a compassionate exemption to travel by the Australian Department of Home Affairs (who eventually deemed my need to travel exceeded the "risk to the Australian public"). For those that are not aware of certain events, this was due to the health of my parents - my father had a stroke earlier in the year which has affected his memory, and my mother has also been struggling with increasing memory problems, and (apart from just plain wanting to see them) I felt I needed to go and see the lie of the land myself and attend their appointments, speak to their health professionals and discuss things with both of them and my sister/brother-in-law.

Having left a NSW in “lockdown”, it was amazing to see the difference in the UK, as for the most part of the time, you would be forgiven for thinking that there was no Coronavirus around, despite there being more daily cases in each local area than there were in the whole of Australia!!

Still, I did profit from this in being able to spend time with family and friends, and I also managed to sneak in a few races (more about them in future posts, as each one was rather “accidental” and last minute) and 5 parkruns, setting 4 new age group records (well, there has to be some bonus from having gone up an age group whilst being out in Oz!!). It was so nice to return to the camaraderie of community sport, and here’s hoping that it won’t be long before it returns in Australia!!

Wow - running in the UK again!!!

The first one I did was at Northwich, as I’d flown into Manchester airport and combined my arrival with a good catch with an old friend (and nice meals out at pubs…..how exciting, as it’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that too!). I hadn’t really planned on going but my body clock was all to pot and I couldn’t sleep so I moseyed on down, ran round, chatted to a few people and then trotted back to my friend’s house….only to find out later that I’d actually run faster than my only other run on the course which was obviously in a younger age group (weird as I paced it so badly - I blame “jet lag” - that I went off too fast and then needed a few walking breaks!!).

Ahhhh.....the lovely Lake District!

My next one was Rothay parkrun in Ambleside, which was at the start of a week on the edge of the Lake District with my parents, sister and all her family. It was my first proper run after a last minute ultra the week beforehand, and so I was just glad to make it round the whole 5K route (and couldn’t actually have run much further), but I liked the course and even more surprisingly, crossed paths with an old childhood friend who was on the last day of his Lake District holiday and so was taking part, along with his wife and children!

Tree-lined paths aplenty in Barrow

Number 3 was at the end of our holiday and , as the earliest riser in the family, I sneaked off down to Barrow parkrun before meeting everyone else at Furness abbey midmorning to start our day of sightseeing (note Barrow is really called Barrow-in-Furness so the abbey was very close to the parkrun). That was another interesting course entirely within a park, with none of the mud of Rothay but many more hills (the biggest one of which we had to run up three times), tree-lined paths and small lakes to skirt.

Gie it laldy (at Lochore)

The next weekend found me visiting a friend up in Scotland and she suggested 3 very different park runs near her house. One was a bigger/more crowded one in the city (a couple of laps of a park), one had an amazing cafe but a more boring  course (round some fields) and the other one didn’t have a good cafe but was a nice course round a loch. I opted for the last one, but we compromised on going for a walk at the second one later after visiting their cafe :-) Lochore parkrun is a nice, small friendly parkrun which consists of most of a lap of the lake with a small out and back section at the far end (I presume this is to avoid the chance of coming across any cars going into the carpark/to the cafe if they’d done a full lap) but the killer bit is that the hidden inclines are in the last kilometre when you’re just hanging on for the finish (which, as it happens, they have moved further away to make it more “Covid-safe”….but I guess that means you get bonus distance!!)

Pacing Sam to a sprint finish!

Finally, on my last weekend in the UK (I was actually on a train leaving Durham by Saturday lunchtime), I ran Durham parkrun as it is not far from my parents’ house. It’s the 4th time I have run it (I’ve been tail walker there once) and the course has changed to a greater or lesser extent each time (due to redevelopment/privatisation of the Sport Centre where it starts), due to subsidence of the riverbanks, and due to building works en route. My parents walked down to see me at the finish and we then went for coffee (and a scone for me!!!) at an outdoor cafe by the rowing club, which was so nice and quiet that I think they’ll go back……and a  lovely way to end my trip!!

Not a bad legacy to leave at Durham parkrun!