Unexpected parkrun in the Preston area

So there I was the other night, waffling on about resolutions and the like.  I couldn't wait to start the new year as a new me, completely different from the old me, with perfect hair, attitude, teeth, you name it.

Then I woke up this morning with a hangover.  Dreadful hair, attitude, breath, you name it. The new me never stood a chance.

But wait.  Those wonderful people at parkrun sent an e-mail round to say that they were hoping to start a parkrun in the Preston park area.  That's just down the road from me, literally.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  It would save me having to run* a mile and a bit to the Hove parkrun, run the parkrun, and then run* back again.  But there was a catch.  They were asking for volunteers to test the course, and they were asking for them at 10am.  This morning.

Reader, I did it.

OK, it was pretty slow (one of my slowest yet) and pretty humiliating (being overtaken by one of the obligatory 70 year olds who I'm sure only turn up to humiliate me).  And of course I finished last.  But I was there with my hair, attitude, teeth, you name it.  They don't have to be perfect - they don't even have to be good - they just have to be running round a park.

Me, a bit nervous at the start of the Prestonparkrun.  CS put a date stamp on the photo to prove it, blessim.  And yes, the kid in the pram beat me.

* when I say run, I mean drive.  And if I could have driven the parkrun I probably would have.

In other news......

Scientists have done a study to see if there is a relation between general cleveriness (as measured by density of nobel prizes) and chocolate consumption (as measured by chocolate eaten, I guess).  They even did a pretty graph, and it looks like this;

The brightest population - the Swiss - eat on average 12kg of chocolate per person per year.  That's <reaches for calculator> about 500 curly wurlies.  I could eat that in one triathlon training session.  But it got me thinking - I've found it really difficult to explain to people (myself included) how someone who needs a calculator to convert kgs to curly wurlies can get a Masters in Astrophysics without cheating.  Now I can point the finger at said curly wurlies.  Just don't ask me how many.