Europe 2023, August 19

Set my alarm for 7am again to leave for parkrun, another two train trip down to South West London. The first part was on the underground from St Pancras to Vauxhall, then had to go up to the over ground for the south western suburbs. Got out at Hampton Wick, one of three stops surrounding Bushy Park.

Bushy Park was amazing, a huge park with heaps of paved and off-road routes to run, way bigger than the 5km parkrun course, just a shame it's far from the city centre so I couldn't go there each day. Richmond Park is also about an equal size and only a few minutes away, really spoilt for choice in this part of London.

I did a 6 kilometre warmup then worked out where everyone was heading for the start, a little distance from the car parks. After the briefing there was a big crowd of over 1000 spread out across a very wide start line. I had a even slower start than usual since the starter just said "ready...go" without the "set" in the middle. I was down in about 50th position from the start as everyone merged onto the path.

I stayed on the grass next to the path in the beginning as it was easier to overtake, although a little uneven. I calculated I was still about 25th position at one of the turns, then caught a group and got into the top 20. A few more twists and turns then a challenging section running on grass into the wind, but that my fastest kilometre. I just caught a few more before the finish line and was pretty exhausted by the end. I came in 16th but one guy went out of order after the finish line so I got credited with 15th in the results, was only one second difference anyway.

18 minutes for 5km was the best I expected to do on tired holiday legs, and no food or drink since dinner either. Then I jogged directly back to the same train station about two kilometres away.

Had a second quick detour to the O2 Outlet again since it was almost on the way, looking for some more comfortable walking shoes. Found a great deal on some Adidas super shoes for only 45 pounds (90 dollars) but it wasn't what I was after today. Also the inner soles look like they weren't glued down well on both pairs of size 13, so decided not to get them.

Instead I got a pair of standard running shoes from New Balance for about 75 pounds (150 dollars). New Balance have weird names for their shoes instead of giving the full name, this one said M1080L12 for example Apparently that means Men's Fresh Foam X 1080 version 12 - London edition. I could probably use them for running afterwards, but for now just wanted something with more cushioning than my very old New Balance Vazee Rush to walk in.

Back to the hotel at last, missed the free breakfast by at least an hour, so moved on to lunch instead since it was nearly 12pm. Packed up nearly 10 days worth of laundry and went down to the local laundromat. I found out some old 10 pound notes I still had from 2015 are no longer valid, but I also had some new 20 pound notes. Stupidly the only option is to go to exactly one Bank Of England location on weekdays to exchange them. Residents can go to some post offices to deposit into a local bank account, but strangely that's limited to 300 pounds per year per person.

It took a while to do the washing and drying but was good to be back to 100% fresh clothes again after 10 days. It was nearly 3pm already and with the soccer starting at 5:30pm there wasn't much time for anything else in between.

The weather forecast looked like mild temperatures and no rain for the match which was good news before heading off. I was still not certain if the ticket was going to work at the stadium, just planning to try to luck with this PDF file being scanned off my phone.

Lucky I left early for the game, it took forever to walk 2 miles (over 3 kilometres) from the nearest underground station to the stadium. Everyone else got out at Seven Sisters underground too, there's an over ground station a little closer but the trains are probably already full if you tried to change over at the last station.

There was a huge line waiting for the team shop so I didn't bother with that and went straight to the gates. The first checkpoint was getting the ticket scanned at the first security checkpoint outside the stadium...and it worked. The ticket also worked to get into the actual stadium soon after and I found my seat up in the top deck. To little surprise another seat that had also been resold next to me went to a South Korean fan - Tottenham will lose half their fans when Son Heung-min leaves or retires.

I got in nearly an hour early after all, it was pretty boring before the game start, nothing going on to pass the time. Finally got started and Manchester United had more possession in the first half but didn't really make any chances with it, and Tottenham just had an occasional counter attack. The first half  finished without any goals. The seat location was fine except even idiots in the upper deck still need to stand up whenever a shot on goal is about to come up.

Only 4 minutes into second half and Tottenham took the lead. The second half was still quite even but looked like Tottenham was more likely to score again from their chances, and eventually benefited from an own goal and the game was over.

I left with a few minutes to go and jogged back to the station to beat the crowd. Another pretty quiet day but ended with about 33,000 steps. Thanks to the favourable time zone the World Athletics from Budapest was live on BBC in the evening, including the women's 10,000 metres final.