Another Parkrun PB

Yesterday I got another Parkrun PB 🙂

But to be honest I was rather surprised – my pre-run preparations were somewhat haphazard and in my rush to leave the house I managed to forget my Garmin. I didn’t realise until I was halfway there and as I was running late there was no time to go back home and get it. I wasn’t worried about not knowing my finish time – as fellow parkrunners will know, the parkrun timing and finishing process is slick and efficient – but I was concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to keep tabs on my pace as I plodded round the course. Fortunately for me, there was a 30 minute pacing group running yesterday morning and so I thought as long as I could stay ahead of them I’d be okay.

Somehow I ended up starting fairly close to the front of the pack and so for the first few metres or so floods of runners went past me but then I settled into my usual plodding pace. After a while someone from our local running club came past me and I got a little worried as speaking to them before the run they said they expected to do about 31 minutes – I knew my legs felt sluggish but surely I wasn’t going that slowly?! Plus I was still ahead of the pacing group. Turns out my fellow runner did about 26 minutes so was going much faster than predicted! So I was still on track but alternating between feeling slightly dizzy and feeling slightly queasy. There was also the shame of being overtaken by another local runner we know who was pushing his daughter in a buggy!

Eventually the two laps were over and there was just the final stretch to the finish left to do, I tried to up my pace but there wasn’t much left – I overtook one lady but then a man and his daughter (both running!) overtook me. Less than 100m or so from the finish another lady came running up behind me and overtook, but happily I had enough energy left in my legs to sprint past her in the final couple of metres! Mr W who was watching me finish, having finished himself in some ridiculously short time, said she didn’t look pleased!! 😉

I was fairly sure I was under 30 minutes as the pacing group were still behind me, but being Garmin-less I then had to wait until late afternoon for the actual time to come through on email – why is it when you really want to know the results of a race they seem to take forever to arrive?!

Anyway, the final result was 28 min 33 sec – 81 seconds better than my last PB, woo hoo!!! 🙂