Parkrun #5

22:37 234/1079

Somewhat slower, but this was a blast. It was Wheezy Junior's first Parkrun so we spent the first 4km together. he did brilliantly and really enjoyed it, and unlike me when I was his age, he didn't sprint the first 400 metres then end up walking. (The number of times I used to do that....). Just a really solid, consistent pace throughout. We has run the first 1km and last kilometre as a warm up so that he would have a good idea of what to expect and to recognise a few landmarks in the last kilometre. When we got to the playground I pushed on and ended up overtaking 35 other runners but Wheezy Junior was only 30 seconds behind. A top effort.

The next day I met up with Simon for a very lumpy 3 hour ride, taking in Coldharbour Lane, Leith Hill and Whitedown. I have to say that considering my complete lack of base miles I felt pretty good. Simon was having a tough time as he just has not been able to get out on the bike at all in the last few months and he kept getting dropped. Once we start racing I'm sure his fitness will return and I'll be eating his dust as usual, but it seems that his metaphoric hill is a larger one to climb at the moment.

I seem to have found a pretty good pattern to my weekly training. 3-4 runs, with nearly all of them including some form of speed work or faster running, even if just a few fartlek efforts. My commute cycling, again, with some form of hard effort at some point, and finally a longish ride to burn a few calories. I don't think I'll be setting the TT world alight in the early season but I do feel like some form of fitness is creeping in. It will be interesting to see how  go in the next few parkruns and whether any meaningful chunks of time will be shaved off. It would be nice to think that I can dip under 19:30 and start to think about sub 19 in the next 6 weeks or so. Just the small matter of staying injury free.