The Alphabet Challenge - April 2020  Boys V Girls

When we were all placed in lockdown towards the end of March, I was worried I would struggle to get out and run if I was working from home and had no reason to leave the house.  What I needed was to have a reason to leave the house, get into a routine and use my one piece of daily exercise that we are permitted to do.  

I also realised, as an Asthma sufferer, that any run I did should be as early as possible to avoid people, and as I am an insomniac and awake before 5am most days, I knew I could run at sunrise.  

I heard that my previous club Great Western Runners were doing a version of an alphabet game, where they were taking pictures of different things from A - Z, so I joined in to get myself out of the house, but I didn't really feel I should be involved, as was not a member of the club anymore.

After a week of being involved in this challenge, Neil Newman sent an email to all EGRC members saying that from 5th April Emersons Green were going to do the alphabet challenge, which involved taking a selfie at all letters from A - Z each day and it would be boys v girls.

I started thinking of different letters I could use for selfies when running around the streets and knew from training for different races, that if I ran slow enough, at recovery run speed, I would be able to run for most of the month without a break, as I only tend to get injured if I run fast for more than a couple of days in a row.

I had decided on the first day I was going to run to the Aquarium in the centre of town, which was 4 miles each way from Fishponds (where l live) and I was thinking of what B to do at the same time! The girls won A, but I thought it is still early days and maybe the boys will start to get involved.

I thought it would be hilarious to run to Brandy Bottom Colliery for B and decided that I wanted to do Clifton Suspension Bridge for C, but as it was a weekday, I decided I would have to cycle to it otherwise I would not get back in time for work at 8am! This was the only letter I cycled for during the challenge.

As I went through the alphabet, I was looking out for the difficult letters of Q, U, X, Y and was taking photos of things when I passed them, to remind me where to run for a selfie on the day.

At the letter J, I read the night before that Jupiter, Saturn and Mars would be in the sky in line with the Moon before sunrise. So, I left for my run at 5am and ran towards Wick to get out of the light pollution and managed to take a photo of Jupiter (a selfie did not work in the dark so I expect the boys were deducted my point for this one!)

On one of the days I was running and I passed the Quran and thought it would be a good idea for Q and another day I was running on the cycle path along the ring road and noticed that a No Stopping sign looked like an X, so I took photos of these to remind me where to run on the day!

Everyday the girls won the alphabet challenge until we got to S and all of the photos from the girls were saying S for staying at home, so the girls had forfeited the day to give the boys a point, which was an amazing thing for them to do. Thank you!

And, as for the P day, the prize definitely went to Mandy Robinson for her inventive drawing!

I finally found my U when seeing a little lane saying it was Unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles and found a Y when I noticed that there was a sign for Yeovil on the ring road.

I finished the alphabet and ran 25 of the letters, just cycling for C and ended up running 220 miles for the month.

The girls won the challenge 25 - 1, which was amazing and it was a great turn out from boys and girls, but the important thing to come out of the alphabet challenge, was that is was a brilliant incentive to leave the house and run different routes to normal.

Well done to everyone who got involved and hopefully we can keep doing different running challenges to keep everyone active in these different times.