Another Run in the Park

A few words about parkruns - once again the alarm went at 6 am and we were off this time to the Minnippi Parklands south of Brisbane. This is a lovely large parkland area with a river (creek!) running through it, fairly flat apart from a slight hill at the top end. This being our third parkrun venue visited since we've been here we thought we were well up to speed - we'd found the park itself the day before, so we thought we knew where we were going. We turned up at about twenty to seven to find no one there - oh heck! Just as we started to panic a runner dashed past telling us that we were in the wrong park, and we made it with a bit to spare - phew!

So the routine is this, the organiser gets up and introduces himself and the marshalls and explains what the course is like, he then makes a short speech to acknowledge the people who used to live here (i.e. aborigines) - at this event we also had another chap who got up and forced us all to do warm up exercises. And then we're off - for the first 1/2K of parkruns I'm usually in about 30th position but gradually start to haul them back. This time there weren't too many runners around me by halfway, in fact I couldn't see anyone else - oh dear, perhaps I should have listened more closely to that fella at the start! So I backtracked to find the next runner losing valuable seconds in the process - yes I was on the right track after all so I legged it like mad to try and make up for lost time - but in a 5K there's not a lot of making up you can do. Meanwhile Vicky steadily jogs round with the dog we're looking after, has to stop for a doggy pit stop and still manages to get her second best parkrun time yet.

parkrun positives -

• nice surroundings, 
• friendly folk, 
• results on t'internet within the hour 
• and they are FREE!

parkrunnegatives -

• 7 am start, 
• varied surfaces some not so good (this one was concrete - in Melbourne we ran on more forgiving dirt tracks!)

http://www.parkrun.com.au/minnippi/

By special request from several of our blogfollowers here's a photo of Bandi our tame Bandicoot who loves his peanuts straight out of their shells! Just to give you an idea of the size the paving stone it's sitting on is 1 metre long. So it wouldn't fit in your back pocket! We've all heard of wallabies, kangaroos and koalas but Oz is also full of all sorts of small odd insignificant marsupials like quolls, quokkas, bettongs, bilbies and bandicoots - all with backwards facing pouches for their Joeys or whatever                            you call baby bandicoots.

Got any popcorn?

Bird of the day - this is an Ibis - they're all over the place in Queensland and if you're having a picnic in the park they're quite liable to flock round and hoover up crumbs, etc. Bit like what pigeons do back home.