Week 12: Friday

Fastest 5km in 3 months

Woohoo, an actual sunny crisp cold winter morning. Exactly what we’ve been missing. Smashrun thinks this run was super notable, so let’s see what nonsense I can write about it.

It started slowly. A van was ahead of me, driving very slowly, and then it had to mount the pavement because the council bin lorry was coming the other way. Just all a bit crowded upfront, but mercifully I managed to speed up straight away. The cold helped, the cold always helps.

No traffic stops to speak of this time around, just a pretty clear run. I didn’t notice my watch vibrate for the 1st km so took a peek at it just to make sure it was actually recording, and it was. I felt fast, and the average pace then was something like, I dunno, 5:11/km. So sub-26:00 pace even with the slow start. Nice.

Spent most of the rest of the run thinking, hmm, can I get sub-26, can I hold on. Third km was 5:15/km so slower than that pace, but the fourth was faster and the fifth was sub-5:00, woohoo. Finished with 25:36 which, as stated multiple times already, was my fastest 5km in 3 months – since the 25:19 I managed at University Parks parkrun in Oxford. That makes this my second fastest Parkrun since turning 50 back in June. Nice! Some actual fucking progress at last.

Apparently it was minus zero celsius, that most myserious of temperatures. But more surprisingly, my watch had a moment when it came to recording elevation and it thought I climbed 107m.

Nonsense. I can’t see why it thought that though, the graph in the Garmin app looks totally normal, not like when it thought I started Des Moines Creek Parkrun 40 metres below sea level.