This was a last minute decision. I’d been chatting to Andrew Johnston of Andrews Animals . We’ve met a few times at parkruns and Waggy Races. We’re both members of the very exclusive IverunallthenornirnpakrunssoIhave Club, AND members of the “My running companion is a dog called Minnie” club. He had a dog training thing to do in Antrim, so we agreed to meet at their parkrun and have a Minnie-race. But thank goodness he did a last minute check to see if the event was on…..and it wasn’t! There’s a fair on in the grounds of the park, which means the parkrun was cancelled for 2 whole weeks. Funnily enough I’d bumped into some Antrim runners the previous Saturday in Enniskillen, as we modelled our hot-off-the-presses 100 shirts.
And as I was there for a weekend’s Scottish dancing, I modelled my tartan leggings, which earned me the nickname “The Flying Scot”. This blog’s not called Dancing At Lunacy for nothin’, ya know!
Anyhoo. No Antrim. But I remembered that Tim Page was going to be at Queens that day, so it seemed a good time to go and meet him.
Tim is a 4 time cancer survivor who is running all 22 of NI’s parkruns to raise money and awareness of leukaemia and lymphoma research. I’d read some of his earlier run reports, and followed him on Facebook, and was delighted when he come out of the door at Queens and greeted me and Minnie by name!
We had a quick chat and admired my T shirt – I’ve promised I’ll make him one too, when he completes his journey at Stormont later this year. We agreed that each parkrun has its own little personality and quirks, but the over-riding common feature is the support and warmth. It’s so much more than “just” running.
I wore my muscle leggings, which always attract a smile, and the weather was kind enough to hold off on the rain for a while. My first lap was pretty smart, but my pace ebbed away during the second lap, and I was about a minute off my last time here.
I tethered Minnie to the pup-park, where she actually behaved nicely for a change! And clapped and cheered the final runners over the finish line. I gave Tim a big hug and a well done, and he smiled and said “It’s good to be alive”.
Having changed phones recently, my playlist was a bit different from the previous one, and the strangely-appropriate-song on this day was Talk Talk with “Life’s What You Make It”.
Well, I’ll leave you with my own motto: there’s more to running than going fast.
Please donate, follow and share Tim’s blog and fundraising page!
Filed under: belfast, Parkrun, running | Tagged: fitforlife, ni parkruns, Queens parkrun |
Dancing At Lunacy 
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