1 Picnic, Too much food, 3 Runners, 4 Good-gymers, 5 miles:

Why we were meeting up; the occasion was Mossley Hill Athletics Tony Barnes Memorial Race a FIVE miler in beautiful Sefton Park to commemorate one of the clubs members who made such an impact to runners in the city – sounds like a lovely guy and what a nice way to remember him.

The evening arrived, it was cool, we were all individually prepared in our own way one with vest, shorts or full length leggings but at least it was dry! This run is a firm favourite for many local people and was quite busy but getting there early allowed us to drop our picnic bags, recruit a bag-drop attendant hopefully, pick up our numbers, to be flummoxed with safety pins and time to chat with others – some we knew, others we got to know. We met two from the Running Bugs group that we had volunteered with at Port Sunlight– its lovely to hear the words Yayy Goodgym – Chai Latte (see Port Sunlight mission for the reference).

The gorgeous thing about running is that we all THREE had different reasons for going to a running event:Laura had always said she was going to run for 3 miles and walk most of the rest – Laura’s regular runs at Good gym and Park run have clearly made her stronger than she gives herself credit for – she ran the whole thing and was commented on for smiling the whole way – see pictures for reference. Sallyann wanted to support Laura with her unique storytelling while they ran and enjoyed the atmosphere, seeing many people she knew which meant there was many shouts outs and hugs along the way. The attitude of soaking up the lovely sense of belonging to a local event with both runners and spectators is a bit of contagious magic that you get if you run with Sallyann. Heetu’s stressful day allowed her to ‘run free’ and enjoyed the stress relief – a lighter Heetu at the finish to the start but not physically as much picnic food was consumed!

Our FOURTH good-gymer Bekah (pun goddess) was stalking around waiting to snap us and cheer us on at various locations with excellent photography skills!

After the run we found a slither of the last of the sunshine to set out our picnic next to the pretty palm house. We had ONE amazing picnic with far TOO much food spread over multiple picnic blankets and our promotional non-alcoholic beers but the standout was Bekah’s homemade TWO different types of Salt&Peppa sausage rolls. Bekah (now baking goddess TOO) mentioned that this was her signature dish but she had played it down, it was definitely the star of the show and we all got to enjoy it TWICE as we got takeaways to enjoy as a midnight snack or whenever!

It was lovely to have a mini-social, we enjoyed spending a little time together, the company was fabulous and nice to chat in the last of the daylight leaving the crumbs for the circling seagulls!