Winter shirtless season is here

-

Winter is well and truly on its way, and my shirtless adventures continue. I'm a regular parkrunner, and I usually run at Southsea parkrun, but this week it was cancelled due to storm damage. So, I decided to head to Chichester parkrun instead.

I woke up and got ready, planning to catch the train to Chichester parkrun. But when I saw an alert that all trains had been cancelled, I hopped in my car and headed off in the pouring rain. On arrival, I joined the small, friendly group of runners and chatted to a couple of people. I hadn't taken my t-shirt off yet, but when the race director started his talk and everyone's focus was on him, I used that opportunity to slip it off without anyone noticing.

The Chichester parkrun course is a 4-lap loop of the sports fields, and it has a strange shape. As we started off, I was nervous about what people would think of me running shirtless. I'm not usually too worried about it at Southsea, where everyone knows me, but this was my first time at Chichester parkrun, and I wasn't sure how people would react.

I started off well and heard someone say, "Oh, you're really going for it!" The route was pretty muddy, but I had my trail shoes on, so it was no problem. Towards the end of the second lap, the heavens opened, and everyone was drenched. For a good five minutes, it was raining hard, and two people commented that I had the right idea by not wearing a shirt.

Onto the third lap now. The sun was starting to come out, and one of the marshals pointed upwards to a fantastic rainbow filling the sky. It was such a happy moment and gave me a boost, which was great. Eventually, I finished the fourth lap and made it to the finish line without anyone even bothering to mention the fact that I was shirtless.

Overall, Chichester parkrun was a great course and had a friendly and welcoming atmosphere.


Location: Chichester, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 7th - Mr Fox and Mr Badger

-
Image
It has been a while since my last post. The main problem is that I've not really done anything out of the ordinary recently, I have continued with my regular swims and those have been wonderful, I have also continued with the shirtless Parkruns and those have been excellent. But as its summer it is nothing really unusual and not much of a challenge to be out with no shirt on. Summer is always good for being shirt free however there really is no challenge in it and it is always hard to get that cold fix or cooler shirtless adventure. It was time to try and arrange something a bit more of a challenge.   Being out for a length of time with no shirt on can be dangerous on sunny days, plus it had been very warm recently so it has been no challenge, so the solution was to be an adventure at night. I am lucky that I have friends who can help at times and so I asked one friend if he was able to set me up a walking challenge one night, he agreed and made the plans.  In the run up to my adve
Read more

December 6th - Parkrun Dilemma

-
Image
    Chris and Rob at Havant Parkrun      I am fairly new to the world of Parkrun, if you're not sure what it is then let me explain, Parkrun is a free weekly Saturday morning 5km run, Parkrun's happen all over the country, there are 5 Parkrun's in my area. Parkrunner's are issued their own personal barcode which is scanned in at the end of each run enabling you to keep track of your progress, its a brilliant idea.       I say I am fairly new to Parkrun, that is a lie, I've actually had a Parkrun barcode for about 5 years but I have never had the confidence to actually join in with one, that was until this July when I took part in my first Parkrun. Last Saturday (the 4th) I took part in my 10th Parkrun, the location I generally choose is in Southsea mainly because I know some of the other runners and it is next to the sea if I feel like I need a dip, The Southsea run is very popular often getting between 300 and 400 runners.     I've was asked not too long ago wh
Read more

Beginning to Feel Alive - Part 1

-
Image
     Hello everyone, so, where to begin? do I start at the beginning? this is so hard for me to explain, let me start a just few years ago.      It was just after Christmas and I found myself being invited to join someone for a swim in the sea on New Years Day, for some reason I jumped at the chance, That morning I packed my trunks and towel and headed on down to the beach to find my friends all wrapped up in their wetsuits, and there I was with just my swimming trunks.    I still did the swim, feeling the freezing cold water move up my body, like a 1000 needles piercing into my skin, it was torture but I soon got my shoulders under and a few minutes later I was walking back up the beach with a massive smile on my face, boy did I feel great.      The New Years dip in the cold sea marked a point in my life when I realised something, the cold makes me feel amazing, how can I explain it, when people ask me I always say it makes me feel alive, I have never done drugs but I can imagine that
Read more