Running for Retrak: Week 5

The last 10 days’ training schedule has been pretty much a write-off, thanks to illness, deadlines and a serious helping of snow and ice. I’m clumsy enough at the best of times, so the idea of going out in those conditions without the right footwear was, my expert friends insisted, foolhardy in the extreme. They should know – one’s a veteran of several marathons; the other lives (and runs) in Norway.

So that was that. Instead I made do with reading about the Parkrun phenomenon that’s growing in England and elsewhere. In case you’ve not heard of it, it’s an informal 5k held in parks across the country every Saturday, organised by volunteers, open to everyone and raved about by all who partake. I’ll be in England this weekend so will give it a try and report back. As far as I can tell, there’s no branch in Brussels, but it would be great to set something up. Any takers?

This week I also talked to the manager of Retrak’s drop-in centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The work they do there with street children is pretty inspiring, and we’ll be publishing the interview here next week. If you want to raise funds to help them carry on their work, you can donate via their website, you can sponsor me as I run the Brussels 20k with the Retrak team in May, or you can even join us. Registration for the team closes next Wednesday, so give it some thought.

I’m donating my fee for this column to Retrak.

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