Easter Saturday 3.5miler out in the Marshes and the dreaded half-day of clothes shopping with a teenager

Got up at 7am and unlike yesterday I managed to get out of bed and go for a run - couldn't find my trail shoes so it was a road run today.

Before I got to Wickhampton, a horse and rider passed me but by the time I worked out where my daughter had hidden the camera option on "my" Ipad, they were almost out of sight - if you look closely you can see them at the end of the road.

When I got to Wickhampton I decided I would head past the church and go into the marshes as the early stages are on hard concrete rather than earth.

Freethorpe decided not to keep their red phone box but Wickhampton has one.

Out in the marshes.

Windmill in the distance.

Eventually you get to the public bridleway but......

Without trail shoes, I wouldn't recommend this route - had I worn them I would have been tempted given my Only The Brave through mud and water last week.

On the way back the sun disappeared and the winds whipped up very quickly - the corner flag of the football pitch has the Freethorpe Football team's colours on it.

So having done my run, I was then off to Norwich to take my daughter shopping for clothes - she shopped till we dropped and put a dent in my wallet but as at 8pm, I am just shy of 16,000 steps for the day.

I did managed to sneak into Sports Direct to get some Karrimor Marathon Socks as my stock of running socks was running low - I have stacks of other running gear but I struggled to find socks last night.

Dodgy photos from Only The Brave

Only The Brave or in my case Only The Stupid

I work in a finance team who quite unusually are highly active in their personal lives, with a high proportion doing some form of regular running, football, squash or workout.
In December there was a bit of banter about doing an event a bit like Tough Mudder but more local and created to support the very worthwhile East Anglian Children's Hospices (EACH) - there was two options - 5miles and 15 obstacles or 10miles and 30 obstacles - and with lots of bravado, comments of "Blakey has 100km so 10miles is a walk in a park", and "I wouldn't get out of bed for less than 10miles" and so on, so we chose 10miles......

Well as you might gather from the limited number of posts in the last few months, I didn't do a great deal of training, running or strength related, so today I found myself using every bit of mental fortitude to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep clambering over obstacles, through very muddy tunnels, knee water and mud etc whereas my eight colleagues managed it with more ease having trained properly for it.....


Above is the pre-race photo - nice and clean with our Aviva t-shirts.


And here is the post-race photos.

It was very tough for me, some of which was of my own making, and some due to the nature of the course - the second half had few obstacles which meant you were running for longer.

I have decided that I whilst I should have trained for this, I am going to use to train from i.e. as a launchpad to regular running through spring and summer, especially as I have signed up to do the Thetford Marathon, which is off-road along an old 110 mile Roman route.

If you are interested about EACH, there website is  https://www.each.org.uk/.

We raised about £500 (it shows £350 but we have some cash donations to add) but if you wish to contribute, the link is https://www.justgiving.com/ClaimsFinance?utm_source=facebook