My final parkrun of 2012 and a nice piece of symmetry as it was also my 25th parkrun in total. I ran at parkrun for the first time back in June as part of Juneathon as I was looking for something new to take part in and then blog about. I have parkrun in the heat, wind, cold, wet, and mud (especially the past few weeks) but every time has been enjoyable and I am looking forward to my 50th parkrun sometime in June or July.
Today I was once again by myself at Gunnersbury parkrun as The Son has picked up a mild cold and so I told him to rest in preparation for the Serpentine 3k fun run, which takes place on New Year’s Day. It was nice to be at a parkrun without any rain but the ground was definitely ‘squelchy’ to say the least and with a strong breeze it was not the sort of day to take down a new PB.
I caught a glimpse of Paul Sinton-Hewitt just as the run briefing was starting and it was a special briefing today as Gunnersbury marked the 250th parkrun of a regular attendee. He is a member of British Airways AC and it was nice to see so many club vests around as they had all come to congratulate the completion of his 250th parkrun.
With The Son being absent it meant that I could go for a fast time again, by my reckoning anyway, so I blasted off the first km in just under 4 minutes. I like to take the first section of the Gunnersbury route quite quickly because it’s the longest downhill slope but this time I probably burnt myself out a bit because I had the mud and wind to contend with. I settled back into a more manageable pace but by half-way I was suffering with some stomach pain that momentarily had me thinking about drastically dropping the pace. The Running Dan household had ran out of milk due to The Son knocking it back as a drink through the school holiday, so I was not able to fuel myself on my usual breakfast of porridge. I suspect this upset my stomach and I just decided to try and run my way through it and hope that the pains would go away.
The stomach pains did subside but only to be replaced with sore ankles as I reached the last kilometre. I just gritted my teeth and kept going only to face the final sprint to the finish funnel, across the grass section that had turned into bog land, only to suffer as the mud sucked away at my shoes. It was a really tough run today and it’s now time to rest for a couple of days before I tackle the Brooks Serpentine New Year’s Day 10k on the 1st January 2013.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:22:22
- Garmin time: 0:22:23
- Gun position: 33 / 124
- Gender position: 31 / 85
- Age category: SM35-39
- Age grade: 60.58 %
