When planning a weekend away, one of the first things I now think of is: ‘Which new parkrun can I visit?’. I love visiting different parkrun venues, with the comforting familiarity of the system mixed with the chance to discover some beautiful new locations. I’m currently working towards my ‘parkrun tourist’ challenge, awarded for running at 20 different parkrun venues, and this was set to be my 13th.
This Easter weekend we were staying in Lincolnshire, and decided to visit Cleethorpes parkrun, around 15 miles away, close to the coast where we were planning to spend the rest of the day. It was a glorious sunny morning, which brought out a bumper crop of 285 runners to Cleethorpes Country Park, which was close to a record attendance for them.
The course was three laps around a lovely little lake. It looked nice and flat, and on smooth tarmac paths so I was hoping for a fast time. Unfortunately my run didn’t go entirely according to plan! A few minutes before the start, Oscar, my 4 year old tripped and fell face-first onto the concrete, meaning a frantic few minutes mopping up a nasty nosebleed (thankyou core team for the first aid help!) and missing my place in the toilet queue. The run was now already getting started, so off I went, but was feeling so uncomfortable that I had to stop after the first lap for an emergency bathroom break, the broken door lock meaning I walked straight in on a very surprised runner! After that, things improved considerably, and I was able to pick up the pace on the final two laps, and finish in 31 minutes, not too bad considering the late start and mid-race pit stop!
After parkrun, we headed a few miles down the coast to Mablethorpe Seal sanctuary, a really lovely little wildlife park next to a gorgeous sandy beach. And, being the Seal family, we just had to pose for this cheesy photo!
You can read all about my parkrun adventures here
And all about my training for the 2019 London Marathon here -only 5 days to go eeek!
Monday Running 
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