The Son was bursting with energy on Saturday morning in readiness to tackle Gunnersbury parkrun once again with the aim of beating his PB. The weather was not ideal, being somewhat hot & sunny, but he lined up on the start line and blasted off by himself because he wanted to run all by himself this week.
I trailed behind while The Son impressively paced himself around the 5:40/km rate and was going well until we hit the first part of the route that was not under shade and this was when the heat started to get to him. There were a few brief walk breaks until eventually I caught up with him at the 4km chalk line where he had completely blown up. His little face was bright red and the sweat was rolling down so we adopted a run / walk strategy together until the funnel was in sight and then he made a sprint for the finish line.
He was under a minute from his personal best and on a much cooler day he would have easily beaten his PB and would probably have broken the 29 minute barrier. He certainly learnt a key lesson this week on pacing on a sunny day so it will be interesting how he approaches parkrun next week.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:30:28
- Garmin time: 0:30:28
- Gun position: 131 / 161
- Gender position: 104 / 108
- Age category: SM35-39
- Age grade: 44.15 %
The Son parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:30:19
- Garmin time: not taken
- Gun position: 128 / 161
- Gender position: 101 / 108
- Age category: JM14
- Age grade: 52.06 %
