Wednesday 22 July 2015

Lesnes Abbey Abbey Abbey junior parkrun 14 - not quite Mr Motivator

Over the last few months, Matilda has fallen at Gravesend (event 14), Hilly Fields (event 6) and Medway (event 1) junior parkruns (as well as once at Dartford parkrun).

Surprisingly, given the terrain, she has not yet fallen at Lesnes Abbey Abbey Abbey. Well technically she has, but because it's grass she hasn't actually hurt herself.

junior parkrun warm-up [copyright: parkrun]

So.... we're going to spend a bit more time at LAAAWjp and less time touring. In order to mark the decision, I decided to volunteer as barcode scanner and also offered to lead the warm-up.

The junior parkrun warm-up is largely the same at all venues and even has its own junior-parkrun-themed guidance sheet.

getting ready for the warm-up [photo: dani]

I have a copy of this at home, and me and Matilda spent a few evenings running through the routine in preparation for our debut.

On the day, Matilda stood next to me and we ran through the warm-up exercises together. It seemed to go ok. Lesnes is quite close knit and the sight of 19 junior faces expectantly looking up at me to provide them a tip-top session wasn't quite as scary as it could have been.

let's go [photo: brian]

Another first for the day was that we left Matilda to run the entire course on her own and she got on pretty well, putting in a 17.03 finish time which is a couple of minutes faster than she would have been if I had been running with her.

It was 23 seconds off of her course best and that included a brief stop to remove her top layer of clothing.

volunteery stuff [photo: dani]

When Matilda had finished running, I got to scan her barcode for the very first time at a junior parkrun. That was a great way to finish off the morning. LAAAWjp is a bit of a flash mob style parkrun and at present it doesn't have a post-run social venue so once the running had finished, that was it.

Before leaving we decided to head over to the playground where we had a lot of fun doing chin-ups and stuff on the new parkour apparatus.

scanning lime [photo: dani]

It was another great morning at Lesnes Abbey, but it could really do with a nice little post run coffee venue. I know there are plans for a visitor centre so hopefully that all gets sorted soon. It feels really weird just walking away and not having a good ol' chin-wag and a drink afterwards!



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