What a beautiful day

Saturday saw the 10th anniversary of the Cardiff Parkrun. The event is an absolute credit to the organisers and to Cardiff. I turned up with a thousand others to run and celebrate. I first ran it at the end of 2011 and I've seen it grow and grow. The beautiful thing about the Parkrun is how inclusive it is. You get variety of ages and abilities out on a Saturday morning from the serious runners without an inch of fat to people running with their dogs and push chairs. It's so friendly and has enough of a bite to it that when you cross the finish line you feel like you've achieved something and earned the rest of your Saturday. On this particularly special run, the Phil Cook the run organiser gave a list of thank yous and looked back at the history briefly before the run began, while the recently beefed up PA played 'What a beautiful day' by the Levellers as it began to rain. 

I sorta knew I wasn't going to get good time on Saturday, but that wasn't really the point. I'd also been feeling a bit of an ache in my left hamstring again, so I was punting in the excuses early. I did think 'Maybe I should have volunteered to Marshall the run instead.' but there were a ton of marshals on the route.  It was just impossible for me to get a clear space at the start just because of the sheer number of people, but it did open up pretty quickly and I did get a fair puff of steam up. In the end it wasn't my best time but it wasn't my worse, I suppose it gives me a marker average pace time, I want to beat my PB this year and get under 19 minutes.

There was such warmth and - quite rightly - feeling of celebration on Saturday morning. It feels that everyone concerned knows how special the Cardiff Parkrun is.