5K PB

I have had a good couple of days on the bike. On Wednesday I did some speedwork and on Friday, I did hill reps. I cycled to the Dad's group for a coffee and I planned to go to Richmond Park afterwards to do some laps.

However, the road from Wimbledon Park goes up quite sharply and a friend, Stephen, had told me of Home Park Road. It is a very very posh road overlooking the park and Wimbledon (as in Centre Court, Henman Hill and strawberries). It has a decent hill that gets up to 11 or 12% and you can really attack it. I did 12 laps of that 1.1 mile circuit and felt pretty good. It did over 30 miles in total.

Today, I had to drop my daughter off at school at 7:45 am as she had a morning as a magistrate in some competition. So I decided to head over to Bushy Park to do a 5K Park Run.

I haven't done a Park Run since September last year and I hadn't done Bushy Park since my first one in February 2008. I was pretty nervous but I wanted to see how quick I was. I feel faster than usual and the moment and my run in the gym last week indicated that I could beat my PB.

I set off down the long starting straight and then quickly remembered why I hate 5K runs. Within a minute I have no idea how I'm going to be able to keep this up for 5km. I tried to keep a constant pace and got to half way feeling ok. I then started to slow a little but felt I was going to come in around the 22:00 minute mark and certainly under my previous PB of 22:24. As I approached the finish line, I was sure I'd come in under 22:00 but I didn't sprint for the line. WHY!!!!! I crossed and my watch said 22:00. BLOODY HELL. I'll be back on the 28th for another go as sub 22 is there for the taking and sub 21 is a possibility.

Results
Final Position: 123rd
Total Finishers: 503
Watch Time: 00:22:00
Official Time: 00:22:05
Winner: 00:16:02
Last Place: 00:41:33

6 seconds. Just 6 seconds!!!
Photo Courtesy of Park Run