After blowing out my knee almost two years ago, I've taken up parkruns as my soccer substitute. It's probably one of those things like Crossfit that should have the same first two rules as Fight Club. I've already talked about it enough on Facebook, but as no one reads this blog anyway, I'm free to ramble on!
On my occasional jogs previously, I thought I was running about as fast as I was capable of, but I surprised myself on my first parkrun with how well I did on a 5K run. Now, only twelve runs into it, I've managed to knock another three whole minutes off that first timed run! I don't know what it is about these things, but it's clear they push me to try harder. My rebuilt knee doesn't seem to be an issue whatsoever.
I look forward to them every week beforehand, and am proud of myself afterwards... it's just the "during" that I hate life. Strangely, it doesn't feel like I'm running any faster -- it's just that my times have been dropping. If I have any reputation on the course, it's probably as a loud breather. This is probably because I'm always trying to stay focused and push myself, so I'm always at the brink of what feels possible for me. The other thing I do is to pick out one of the other runners as my pacesetter, and try to keep up with them. I almost always have to change pacesetters at some point, either when I pass them or (more likely) they pull away and I can't keep up. It's supposed to be a non-competitive sport (or at least, you're only competing against yourself), but I just have to pretend that everyone around me is my competitor. This especially applies at the finish, where I always hope I have something left to either pass one more person or hold off someone trying to pass me. Only on maybe one run in four do I feel like I have anything left to give towards the end though, so I'm almost always the one getting passed.
My local parkrun, Cambridge (technically in Milton, my home village) I think is one of the larger ones in the country, with over 500 runners at the last race I did, and is very well organised (I have yet to volunteer, but I owe them a time or two). But I like that they have them worldwide. As you are registered internationally when you sign up, you can track all your runs on their website. And they have stupid little challenges you can try for -- I'm accidentally well on my way to completing the Pirate challenge: run seven parkruns starting with a C ("seven seas") and one starting with an R ("Arrrr..."). So far the three I've done (Cambridge, Coldham's Common, and Canterbury) are all Cs! This extension is recommended for tracking these things.
Dogs aren't allowed at my local parkrun, but I did take Hamish once to the other one in town at Coldham's Common... He enjoyed it I think, but he's nine years old now, so I had drag him pretty much the whole way, and it certainly didn't help my time.
On today's parkrun I pushed on through a stitch (note to self: no more bananas beforehand) and the results are in -- I knocked two seconds off my best! I think I'm probably in the zone where future gains will be modest like this. Would love to get my time under twenty minutes, but that will be a ways off I think. But there's always some new target that seems in reach... I'm very close to beating a seven-minute mile average, and a 70% age grading appears to be in reach.
