Lesnes Abbey Woods junior parkrun 8

At 8am on junior parkrun day I was sitting down wondering what the day would bring. The weather forecast was for a glorious day and I didn't want to waste it sitting at home - we had options but hadn't decided at this stage. So I wandered into the bedroom and accidentally on purpose starting talking loud enough to cause wakage of the junior parkrunner.

After a little discussion, the junior one decided that today was a day for visiting junior parkrun and she wanted to go to the same one as her friend, Alex. We weren't entirely sure which venue he might go to so after sending a message to his mum we took an educated guess and headed towards Lesnes Abbey Woods junior parkrun.

briefing and warmup [photo: brian crane - official photographer]

It was all a little frantic as we left home about 25 minutes before this venue's start time (which is 9am). For some reason, in my head it takes ages to drive there. In fact it only takes about 10 minutes, so we arrived with 15 minutes to spare.

Up at the run HQ, we met up with the team and Matilda was looking around for her friend. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it and she was a little upset. So once we'd got past that, we started getting ready for the run - She likes to play a game where we chase each other's shadows and we did this as a pre-warm up warm up.

at the start of lap two [photo: brian crane - official photographer]

Once the real warm-up had finished, we headed to the start line and Matilda headed off for her first of three mildly undulating laps around the ruins of Lesnes Abbey. We've started playing another game called 'parent relay' where I will run a lap, then tag Dani and she will run a lap before tagging me again and I complete the final lap with Matilda. So we did that and worked out pretty well. We also played a bit more 'chase the shadow' as we went around.

Last time Matilda ran here she wasn't really having a great day and spent a lot of time walking. This time she only took a couple of short walking breaks and managed to wipe five-and-a-half-minutes off of her last time here to bring her course best down to 16.40 [full results here].

she insisted that our running gear matched (i have to find some pink shorts for next time) [photo: brian crane]

As soon as she had had her barcode scanned she was right back over at the car and looking to get on to our next appointment at the SLGR Fun Day!