So after all the rather piggy, albeit amazingly delicious, array of food the day before, we woke up Saturday to do, of course, parkrun.
I was so pleased when I found out a relatively new London parkrun had sprung up beginning with the letter ‘V’. The nearest V had been Valentine, but that was still ages away. Victoria Docks parkrun, however, was a mere 20-30ish minute journey from our hotel and only 10 weeks old. We both felt somewhat worse for wear after the beers and excessive amount of food the day before but we got ourselves together, checked out of the hotel and headed to the Excel Centre, where the parkrun was located.
It was a fairly easy tube ride and short walk so we arrived in good time. The tell-tell signs of other parkrunners wearing their apricot and ‘100’ t-shirts could be seen so we knew we were in the right area.
Where the parkrun was based was a really pretty location next to, obviously, the docks and a pretty garden area (the Crystal Gardens).
It was already feeling very warm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There was a storeroom where there was a loo and free refreshments in the shape of tea, coffee and water. How posh eh!
Originally James had said he’d run with me and we’d test out a harder tempo effort (for me) of 6:50s to see how that felt. Well, within 30 seconds of starting he decided to run solo when he realised he could get a high placing (not that parkrun is a race of course). There were just over 100 people running and it seemed that the faster people weren’t super duper fast relative to James. In fairness I had said to James he didn’t have to run with me… Clearly not familiar with what a woman says and what she actually means, eh 😉 I was happy to run on my own in the end and actually found myself running 6.30min/miles rather than sticking to the original plan. It didn’t feel that fast strangely. I was surprised! I mean it didn’t feel easy of course, I hasten to add, but it didn’t feel like 6.30 pace.
Victoria Docks parkrun is super flat and is basically an out and back along the docks one side, then a shorter out and back the other side before finishing. I quite like this sort of course as you get to see other runners. You also never feel that far away from the finish so mentally it feels a bit easier. The only hindrance I felt were the cobbles on the pavement that were every so often. Running slower I’m sure I wouldn’t have noticed, but trying to run at a fast pace it seems any slight variation can be magnified.
James was well out in front and I was happy to be maintaining an even pace, so it was going well for us both. The last mile did feel somewhat like I’d be seeing doughnuts again and I got a terrible stitch. As I got to the finish funnel I stopped my watch and looked at it to see 19:59… oooooh would I get another official sub 20 minute 5k? I’d have to wait and see.
I then got my wrist band ready to scan with my finisher’s token…only to discover I’d stupidly packed my Berlin Marathon wristband instead.
What a numpty. Luckily I had a spare barcode in my purse (always have a spare, especially if you’re me and you can never truly rely on your own intelligence to get through). But finally got my ‘V’! Woohoo! James and I then did two miles cooling down.
Though realistically there was nothing cool about the temperature now. It was nice though to shake the legs out a bit. As we came back round to the finish avoiding the funnel area to collect our bags, a couple of random men who were just chilling on the grass started cheering us in and then shouted to us that we were going the wrong way and that we needed to run through the funnel. We shouted that we had finished and were cooling down. They then started to cheer us again, chorusing a sing-song of “carry on, carry on!” It was quite amusing.
We then got changed in the store room. I’d handily packed baby wipes as we weren’t going back to the hotel and had to survive the rest of the day now as we were. I hung my Barbour jacket on one of the marshal pegs with the high vis jackets on while I got myself sorted. We then went on our merry way to Southwark to have some brunch. I never picked back up my jacket from the peg. *sighs*
Blissfully unaware about this at that point, we headed off for some brunch in Southwark in a lovely restaurant called The Table Café. Southwark brought back amusing memories of a few months ago when we met up to do the Southwark parkrun and got out at the Southwark tube stop thinking it was there…only to find it was a few more stops away. I mean, why on earth would the Southwark parkrun be near the Southwark tube stop eh!?
We luckily got into the restaurant before a queue outside the door started – very lucky! I ordered a full English (of course I did) and James ordered eggs Florentine. We also shared some pancakes (maple bacon and caramelised banana, but we skipped the banana as neither of us are a fan). Now I’m not a huge pancake fan but they were nice, though James said they were some of the best he’d ever had so there we go. My fry-up was fabulous.
As it’s my mum’s *whispers* 60th coming up (she doesn’t want anyone to know her age…I personally think she should be proud!), I’d bought her tickets to see Phantom of the Opera so I was meeting my parents at 2pm to watch that at the Haymarket Theatre. So James and I had a leisurely stroll from Southwark to Leicester Square. We actually bumped into them in Leicester Square which was a bit mad considering how busy it was with the fever of the Royal Wedding being strong.
Phantom of the Opera was just amazing. I’ve seen the film but never the play and I was blown away. The singing was SO good. I mean the high notes were insane. And I even found myself getting a bit teary eyed during the love songs. Ahhh so good. My parents loved it too. I was so pleased my mum had a good time.
And then afterwards I dashed off to Parliament Hill to meet back up with James and some fellow Marathon Talkers for the Night of the 10,000m PBs event. The event was basically a load of 10k races for elites while us non-elites could drink beer, eat pizza and cheer them on as they ran around the track. This event is now on its sixth year and its aim is to put a bit of fun back into watching races.
And fun it was indeed. The atmosphere was buzzing. Strava were sponsoring the event so there were a lot of large Strava ‘kudos’ foam thumbs (like the gladiator foam fingers) as well as food trucks, a beer tent, a pop-up bar selling gin… it was all going on. It was lovely to see the familiar Marathon Talk faces – Martin Yelling himself, Run Campers and Austria Run Campers. I had a few beers, enjoyed a goat’s cheese and sun-dried tomato pizza and just chilled out.
I also managed to wrangle myself a free slice of rhubarb crumble. I’d spotted a man handing out slices of his homemade crumble to his friends (I think it was someone’s birthday) and I jokingly (not joking really though) asked how much I could pay him for a slice. And he readily handed me one over and said, “have that one for free!”. What a gentleman! When it comes to pudding, I can find it anywhere 😉
I won’t lie. I didn’t really intensely watch the racing (though having looked it up the winner of the A race was Richard Ringer in 27:36 – wowza!). I was just enjoying the atmosphere, being with friends and the beer. But it was cool to see the super fast runners fly past us at different times.
It was a nice chilled out affair. I got to meet one of the hosts, Shaun Dixon, of the other running podcast I listen to (I know, cheating on Marathon Talk…) Let’s Get Running as James used to be coached by him. It was nice to meet him in person (always fun when you’ve listened to someone only and never seen what they actually look like in real life).
The Night of the 10,000m PBs was a fantastic event. It was great to be able to watch such a high standard of racing but in such a relaxed and fun environment. I’d definitely come back again. Sadly I did have to leave early though (before 9pm) to catch my train back to Southampton. I was shattered I can tell you! Such a jam-packed couple of days. Good times 🙂
Do you like to watch races?
What have you seen at the theatre?
What’s your favourite brunch option?
The chips were immense though. The annoying thing now is that I now have the craving and there’s a Five Guys fairly near to where I live. Oh the struggle.
And then it was time for some Harry Potter fun! I won’t upload too many photos because you really need to go there to see how fun it is for yourself and photos just won’t recreate the magic. If you love Harry Potter you’ll love this tour. So many interesting facts, cool things to see and do and basically just a good time.
I mean, it does make you fully realise how obsessed with Harry Potter people can be though! I’ve been to the Orlando Universal Studios and Island of Adventure where the Harry Potter themed area is (with the cool Hogwarts Express connecting the two parks) but it dilutes the craziness a bit because it’s also got lots of other non-Harry Potter stuff. This was intense Harry Potter-ness. But don’t get me wrong though, I’m a big fan too and will always love the fact that my age-group grew up with the books being released and Harry was the same age as us as we read.
After the visit, we caught a train into London where we checked into our hotel. We then headed out to buy some pudding… doughnut style. I’m obsessed with these artisan doughnuts I keep seeing everywhere on Instagram. I’m not usually a big doughnut fan but the artisan ones just look and sound amazing. Something a bit more exciting than your standard ring or jam ones! We bought six from 
It was just a case of not being able to choose just one each. I went for a crunchy-themed doughnut (bottom left), a Nutella filled one (Love at First Bite) and It’s Always a Gay Time (top left) which is basically a lot of honeycomb caramel yumminess. James’ were Stranger Rings (chocolate glazed with Oreo crumbs and Nutella – middle top), Hans Rolo (chocolate and caramel – bottom right) and Cornelius Fudge (actually vegan with lots of chocolate and brownie pies – bottom middle).
This was SO good. The wings were amazing. I mean, to be honest it was all amazing. We thoroughly enjoyed this and polished it off easily. We then had another sharing platter for main. This time containing pieces of chicken, ribs, pulled pork, corn bread, coleslaw and chips (underneath the platter).
We did make quite a few of the staff jealous with our donuts though when we first arrived as we were carrying the box with us. We gave them a sneak peak and they all joked they could look after them for us while we ate. Surrrre 😉
I also had my Nutella one. Now I have an issue with Nutella. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I’m not a big fan. The doughnut was good but I think it was just too much Nutella for me. It was a bit of a shame but no regrets really!
I was sent a pair of 
What do I think? I really like them. They fit SO well in my ears (they also come with different size ear bits if you struggle). They slot in and stay put, when I run and when I’m at the gym. The sound quality is great – I can hear my music so well (even over the music at the gym). And the adjustable cable at the back is perfect and doesn’t bug me.
What I will say though is since I’ve been using Aftershokz it is a bit of a shock to suddenly go into an immersive sound experience while running. What I mean by that is that I can only hear my music and nothing else. This is fantastic in the gym scenario when I literally want to shut out the sounds around me. It’s also great if you’re on the train. Absolutely ideal. However when I run I do want to be able to hear the outdoors a bit more. This is for safety reasons mainly (because remember, I’m essentially an idiot) but also in a race scenario I’d like to be able to hear marshals, the crowd and feel the atmosphere.
That said, I do love these earphones. They’re my solid choice for train use and for the gym. I love them. I will use them for running as well, but probably just when I’m running on my own in familiar areas that aren’t too much near the road.
So on Tuesday evening I jogged over (literally 5 minutes from my house) and we went for a lovely 7 mile run together. We were roughly the same pace so could chat easily while neither of us felt like we were dying or running too slowly. It was such a lovely run. But it is funny, how do you start a conversation with someone you haven’t seen since school? We covered a lot of topics I can tell you! Hopefully we’ll continue to run the odd run together when our schedules allow (I say “our”, she has a baby so she’s far more busy than me!).
Basically they were selling the stuff that couldn’t be sold commercially. So tops were £3, shorts and leggings £4 etc. Well it was madness I tell you. 
Everyone went mental over it. A huge queue formed to get into the meeting room and then when we got int there it was like Primark on Boxing Day. Absolutely mental.
One happy customer! In the end around £2,300 was raised and will all be going to charity. How good is that?
There’s always the danger to forget something really… but socks! Ehhh, such a pain. I decided to risk it because I was pretty much ready to go (well, sans socks and trainers) and I couldn’t be bothered to go running after work. Thankfully I didn’t get any blisters, despite it being very warm outside, but it was a close call. What an idiot, eh.
And marathons. Ahh marathons. Doing the Marathon Majors is collecting game for me. It’s a long game, don’t get me wrong, but ticking each one of the list is just something that I love to do. I don’t necessarily care about the times I get or if I break my PB. Nope. I just want to collect each medal and earn my bigger Six Star Medal at the end.
And alongside that I’ve been trying to complete different parkrun challenges… get to 50, get to 100, get to 150, now get 20 different ones, now get all the letters of the alphabet, get to 200…250… tick off all the local ones, the Brighton ones, the Bristol ones, the Birmingham ones. Ahh call me a loser, call me a weirdo, but I so enjoy this kind of thing.
Most importantly, it keeps me motivated to run – and with that to be healthy and uninjured, work hard at the gym, take rest seriously, eat a balanced diet. It keeps me mentally healthy as well to not focus on smashing myself at every parkrun or race. It’s been a long while since I’ve felt disappointed about a parkun time. I remember when I first started running and every race I had to beat my last time, every parkrun had to be faster – and if not, why not? Could I justify why I’d run so slowly? It really ground me down.