Parkrun fun times

Another Saturday, another parkrun.

With two successive easy days behind me I had hopes of a good time today. The 3 mile warm up flew by which is always a good sign. The strides felt decent and I got there in plenty of time to catch my breath before the start.

Off we go and a couple of runners tear off, quickly dropping the rest of the field. I start harder than normal and soon find myself in 6th place with a strong runner in front. He gradually pulls away from me over the first lap and I gradually pull away from whoever is behind me leaving me by myself for the second lap.

Running alone makes it impossible to squeeze everything out of your legs but I keep up a hard effort and manage to keep the HR around 160 which is about as high as I can get it these days.

I lap a handful of people towards the end of the second lap and then it is the finish straight. This 250m section is my favourite part of the course as it is flat, then downhill and then flat to the finish line. You can really take off on the downhill bit and then maintain the pace to the finish to really complete the course with gusto!

Have I gone sub 19? Not quite. 19:03 for my joint second fastest time on this course. It felt good. It was fun. I'll take it.