Wake up Maldon

Today I headed to the first parkrun I have done outside of Essex.

Chauffeur Vaughan collected me very early, preempting our usual panic as we find ourselves lost.  I was also handed my co-pilot (RESERVE) directions sheet as I boarded.

We parked, without incident, with a good 30 minutes to spare.  Then we got lost.  That is a slight exaggeration as we had, in fact, parked in the car park on the opposite side of the park to the start and proceeded to take a very wide, circular route to where we needed to be.

Despite a weather forecast that had suggested a dry morning it began to rain and we enjoyed the shelter and facilities of the cricket pavilion as the event team set up.  Having had difficulty in hearing the pre-event briefings at my home run for the last few weeks I was particularly taken my the PA system until my ears rattled from a very loud "wake up Maldon" as the RD spotted Chauffeur Vaughan looking the wrong way as he began his briefing.

Spotting that there was a 38 minute pacer I decided to attempt to keep up with her as long as I could.  I knew that even at Maldon that would have been an ambitious time for me today as I'd been nursing a sore knee all week.  

She kept a very steady pace and I managed to stay with her for a while, walking a little up an incline and then catching up.  The next incline though and she was gone.  I was pleased to catch up with her afterwards and thank her for her effort.  She was running again later today.  I shall be mostly catching up with Game of Thrones and a couple of other equally pressing tasks.

We enjoyed the obligatory post event coffee and catch up, chatting to a local about t-shirts, pod casts and other such stuff before Chauffeur Vaughan drove us all home, discussing some up and coming parkrun milestones we have and cake.

I was happy to learn that my Garmin and the official time were the same as I acquired an I for my alphabet challenge and a 46 for my stopwatch bingo.

26th different event, first out of home County and 12 more until the next big thing.