A very special start by bobbi10100

My Dad and I travelled down to London on Friday night for the training day at Battersea Park.  We had to be at the Millenium Stadium for 10am, 10-30am start.  We met the friendly events team for Barnardos, and I collected my Barnardos vest.  It was an exciting feeling meeting some of the other runners, a shared goal between us.

So I put my vest on and went out onto the track with Dad and met the others.  Daley Thompson and Snowy led the training.  First we ran around the track twice, while Daley shouted 1) left hand touch the floor, 2) right hand touch the floor, 3) jump and hands in the air, 4) four steps back and 5) turn around.  In the final lap we did side step jumps on both sides.  After that we got into groups of 6 and were asked to line up on the track, one lane each.  We then had to sprint approx 500 metres, which we did 3 times.  The warm up was great fun.

We were then asked to do some stretching exercises with Snowy, while we were called out individually to have our photo taken with Daley Thompson running on the track.  As usual I made an arse of myself and started to run back after the pic was taken.  Daley told me calm down as we'd be running later! What a wally! The warm up session ended with a group photo.

We then hit Battersea Park, Daley paced us and we were free to run as far as we wanted.  Some ran 20 miles!  Dad and I weren't quite that ambitious and ran around the outside of Battersea Park, over Chelsea bridge and around back into the park.  We stopped for some water and a banana, then ran around the inside of the park.  In total we ran approx 7-8 miles, my phone lost the gps fix again! and didn't log the whole route.  I couldn't believe how fit the others were, they soon shot off.  Dad and I kept to our usual pace and plodded round quite happily!  My calf started twinging and I was convinced it was going to "go" again, but after the fuel pitstop it was fine.  No pain today either, legs aren't really aching too much either.  A testiment to proper warm ups.  After the run, I knew that it had taken a lot out of me, because my brain just wouldn't function and felt so exhausted.  I've got a long way to go still.  I'm so grateful to my Dad for coming down to London with me, it would have been difficult without him.

Finally for all you Twitterers, I had a Tweet-up with @CocaBeenSlinky she power walked in to meet us.  We had a lot of catching up to do, and chatted none stop for ages! Women eh?! Susan is a lovely lady and I'm so pleased she took the time to come over and say hello.

Thanks for reading my ramblings, until next time...xx

Link to my Virgin Giving Site http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/DonnaWilson