A bit of a disappointing parkrun. There's always another one coming up soon though!

I got a parkrun in on the weekend, but ended up being disappointed with my time of 21:43 (PB on that course is 21:29 from 2 weeks ago).

I was really "up for" the event and had kind of planned the training week to be in fighting form for the Saturday morning, hence why I'm a bit disappointed.  I did 1.5 mile warmup, with some short blasts at my 5K race pace and I toed the start line feeling good.  I don't usually do this type of warm-up but I'm sure the warm-up wasn't the issue for my disappointing time. 

Unfortunately, I did the classic beginner mistake and set off far too quickly and got slower as the event went on.  Splits were 6:31, 7:00, 7:18 and 52secs for the last bit.  I glanced at my watch in the first mile and saw I was doing 5:45 which is just stupid and I basically struggled from then on.  I can't really explain it except to say I got caught up with a bunch of quicker runners in the first half a mile or so and so I didn't run my own event (I'm being careful not to call the parkrun a race....!)

Maybe it's misplaced, but I'm convinced I've got a 20:XX in me, even if it's 20:59 which is what I was hoping for on Saturday as the conditions were perfect and, like I say, I was feeling good.  This would be 6:45 min/mile pace.  I'm basing this on what I can do 5x1K intervals in, with each interval being at 6min/mile, sometimes quicker.  Am I deluded that I think I've got a 20:59 in me?  I hope not!

I'll tell you one thing.  The pain from a fast (for me) 5K is a whole different kind of pain compared to a marathon.  Not worse pain, just different.  I genuinely thought I was going to throw up at the end!

Nevermind - there's always the next one.

This week is a fairly standard week, and it has cooled down.  At the moment though there are some very sharp showers so that may be a shock to the system, but I prefer that to the blazing heat.

parkrun PB, plus a busy week planned.

I mentioned in a recent post that Barnstaple parkrun looked flat and fast.  My wife and I fancied a weekend away and we like the North Devon area so we decided to book into a hotel in Barnstaple with a view of doing the parkrun on the Saturday AM and relaxing the rest of the weekend.

I mentioned in that post that I thought Barnstaple would be fast and mentioned getting a 20.xx time.  Unfortunately, I was some way off of getting this time but I did manage a PB of 21:29.  It was only a 3-second PB, but it still counts.  It's interesting though as I genuinely though that Barnstaple would be significantly quicker than Killerton but it turns out I was wrong.

The splits were:

1 6:39.3
2 6:48.8
3 7:01.2
3.14 1:00.2 (Avg Pace: 7:04), with an overall average pace of 6:49.

Disappointingly, you can see that my second and third miles were significantly slower than the first mile, so there is something to work on there.  I would definitely do the Barnstaple parkrun again though, and I hope to keep chipping away at my time to see if can get that elusive 20.xx time.  To do that, I need to average around 06:45 for the 5K, although Barnstaple was very slightly long (according to my Garmin) which could be a slight issue for me.

Moving on to this week, I have got a slightly unusual week planned.  I am marshalling at a club event (the Haytor Heller) on Saturday and there is a "reccie run" on Wednesday which I am attending also, so I'll be doing 6-7 miles around Dartmoor on Wednesday evening.  It should be good, but I expect it's going to be quite hot and I don't love the off road stuff.  A fellow member owns a hotel near Haytor so we'll be going back to there for some food afterwards.

Other than that, I have the usual mix of  sessions planned with an 18 miler planned for the weekend.  We'll see how that goes, as I haven't really been enjoying this warmer weather from a running point of view.