It was parkrun this morning, and I really wasn’t in the mood to head out and do it. I waited until the very last moment that I could leave the house, braced myself and jumped in the car to head over to Edge Hill. At some point soon I’ll think about running over, but for the moment I want to just get that Saturday morning 5k out the door and get home as quickly as possible.

In my runkeeper notes, I wrote that my head had been full of thoughts about giving up. I think that as soon as the running gets difficult, my body reacts by trying to get me to stop by any means necessary. Today I was thinking that I was doing just one too many things, trying to juggle all sorts of things while Jude is away and going out running was too much. For a moment, I considered just turning left instead of right at Ruff Lane and jog down to the car and head home. But that didn’t last long. I put my head down and cracked on.

Despite the wind and cold, I came in at 29:14, ten seconds behind my PB. Runkeeper tells me that it was my fastest pace, but I think that’s because it has me running a little over 5k, which is possible with moving from one side to the other and generally wobbling around; but not enough to make a big difference, I think.

The plan had been that we should all go swimming at Splashworld later in the day and also take in a walk along the promenade. However, when I checked my calendar I realised that Joel had a birthday pool party scheduled for the afternoon. So the happy plans went out the window. Instead we pottered, made food and generally took things a bit easier.

After dropping Joel off for his party, Lily and I went down to Formby Shore to walk through the woods and along the beach a bit. It was cold, wet and windy. Lovely weather for a walk with Lily who is possibly the least enthusiastic walker in the house. It was difficult to get any pace going because of the mud and the wet sand – it’s not great underfoot. So Lily was able both to keep up and also to occasionally go running off ahead when she spotted something interesting.

Walking with the children is very lovely, and is something that I’d like to continue, but they both seem to get a cramp around 20-25 minutes into the walk. If we’re running then it comes on sooner. Today was no exception, and Lily had to sit down for a moment while I stomped around in a large circle around the bench until she felt a bit better. There was also a bit of looping around as we approached the car, since we would have got there at 29 minutes, and that’s just not 30. I’ve had this problem before and a 30 minute walk is a 30 minute walk, no less, otherwise the Gods of Walking become riled.

To further pass the time, Lily and I went off to drink hot chocolate and black coffee at a place called Haro Lounge in Formby. It’s a lovely place and I was keen to come back and try the food, but Lily was all for heading home – which we did, after picking up the boy.

So today I got a 5k run in and a 2.4k walk. According to the Strides app, that takes me to 46.13km running and 65.5km walking so far this year – which would get me close to Bangor if heading west or to Harrogate if heading east. That’s feels like quite a long way for an hour or so each day. I wonder if I should consider one of those coast to coast walks.

Tomorrow looks busy, not sure how I’m going to fit everything in, but I’ll give it a good go.