Swamp Thing, pacing troubles, new recruit and puncture repair with scrambed egg.
The Son cocooned himself under a mound of blankets and barely stirred when I floated through his room with his parkrun shirt. I left him to carry on his slumber and headed to Gunnersbury parkrun by myself, which is bit of a shame since he’s flying to Japan on Thursday so won’t be back parkrunning until 11th January.
I was warming up when I noticed that Other Dan was approaching in the distance by walking his bike, which seemed a bit odd to me. It turned out that he picked up a puncture on the way and had to run with his bike to make it on time.
It was time to test out my fitness and with pacers I decided to follow the 23 minute pacer and overtake him at the end to claim my first sub-23 minute parkrun for a few months. Everything seemed to be going well as I tucked myself in to draft the pacer until he realised that he was behind schedule and he suddenly put in a burst of speed to reach half way on time.
The second half saw me picking up my pace to rein in the pacer, which I managed to complete as we approached the café area, and then at the 4km point I sped up again to pass the pacer and go fast and hard to the finish. My legs were aching as I huffed and puffed up the slope and through the finish funnel to find my Garmin recorded finish was 0:22:59. Uh oh. I was ahead of the pacer but that sort of time does not leave my with any margin for error. Unfortunately Garmin rolled me up to a round 0:23:00 on their web site and then parkrun sent me the result text in the afternoon to confirm a time of 0:23:00. Bah!
parkrun at Gunnersbury has to end with scrambled eggs on toast so today we sat outside to refuel while Other Dan repaired his puncture. I also managed to meet a fellow Eagle who was joining us for cross-country for the first time.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:23:00
- Garmin time: 0:23:00
- Finish position: 47 / 198
- Gender position: 41 / 126
- Age category: VM40-44
- Age grade: 59.35 %
