Newbury Parkrun 99

This weekend saw me with a rare break in my Under 7s football attendance duties, so I took the opportunity to run Newbury Parkrun.

I know I need a longer warm-up these days, so I left from home and jogged the 2.5 miles to Greenham Common, getting there just before 9am. I thought I’d be around 22 minutes or 22:30, and I kicked off at a pace that didn’t feel too bad. After 5 minutes Mrs Runkeeper announced that I was running at 6:28 pace.

“No way I can keep this up”

I thought I’d blow up after a short while, but I managed to keep it up for another 10 minutes, then powered up the little incline on the back straight. When I got to the top of this I thought to myself that I could take down the guy I’d been to’ing and fro’ing with all the way, so I kicked and started to get a lead on him.
I quickly realised that the 200m I thought there was to go was more like 600m- 800m and I knew I’d no chance of keeping it up for the duration.So a 100m or so later he sailed past me with a smug grin (as I would have…). Still, a 20:43 finish for 17th was way above my expectations given my current shape.
I knew I’d pushed myself as the jog home was very slow…

Sunday started as an easy day after the race pace effort, but come 7pm I was feeling good and itching to head out, so I had a steady 6 mile effort around the Thatcham loop  bringing me to a tad over 35 miles for the week.

Now I just need to calm myself down a bit and work on longer, slower runs.