Well, I survived the parkrun. Due to diversions it was slightly longer than 5km (5.3km), the weather was horrid but I didn’t notice and it was great to see people of all ages, shapes and sizes out running the distance. I have to say that I found it quite a hard run – there was a lot of uphill. As there were three laps that also indicates a lot of downhill, but it’s the uphill that hurts. At the start I struggled to keep my pace down but soon settled and got on with the slog.

If you have the opportunity to run in a parkrun I highly recommend it. The atmosphere was great and it was good to be pushed – I had a lady 5 metres behind me all the way and I was buggered if I was going to let her past. Checking the results later, I discovered she’s 15 – 20 years younger than me so I’m slightly pleased at that.

My legs feel like they did after 8.5km a few weeks back. I had planned to do a longish run tomorrow as well, but now we’ll just have to wait and see.

I finished 70 out of 102 and beat my PB by 21 seconds so a good day! The only negative was (and fortunately I checked this out before it was too late) about half the course was on wet grass / mud so I had to wear my Breathos instead of my Evos so they still haven’t had a proper outing.