Discovering Positives from Negatives

Creative networking with Dundee based Make Up Artist Jillian Elizabeth

As chance would have it, I had work in Dundee last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which afforded me the opportunity to, for the first time in my life, spend the night in the City of Discovery, well two actually.  As luck would have it, the first ever Dundee Creatives Network meeting was being held in the city on the Tuesday, which is my normal camera club night and also my 'rest day'.  It was good to have some like minded people to share a few drinks and laughs with on my first night on Tayside.  On Wednesday, I had my first ever Dundee run, along the N77 and past the airport and back. It was windy, very windy, on the way out but I was like an Olympic Champion on the return leg with the wind at my back.

With no hill work in my training week, I decided to take in the Tollcross parkrun with its 10 hills instead.  It's difficult to compare one course/race with another but, as mentioned in a previous post, Run Britain have devised a handicap for races, known as SSS or standard scratch score.  The Glasgow parkrun, which I had recently raced, was graded as 1.5, the full length Victoria parkrun 1.2 and Strathclyde parkrun 1.0.  This week's Tollcross parkrun was graded 3.0!

The runner's individual performance is calculated and a vSSS awarded.  The lower the vSSS the better the runner has performed.  In 2010, I was running well and managed to get 7 vSSSs which were awarded negative scores.  It's been a long time coming but on Saturday, I achieved a -0.4 for the race.  I had achieved a +0.6 at Strathclyde and +0.2 at Victoria park but this was my first negative vSSS in almost 3 years!

Now that's what I call a positive, relatively speaking of course.