Week 9: Saturday - easy run
Fourth time’s the charm
OK well, I dunno if I’m still actually doing the plan but given Saturday 30th November was scheduled to be a 5.5km easy run, and Saturday is Parkrun, I figure what the hell: must as well write some stuff about it. Especially as I just learnt that two people are reading this (not including me). Mike, you’ve got company!
HalifaX Parkrun - 391st run, 55th venue
We were in Halifax visiting friends and Helen’s family, making a weekend of it with the Christmas market and whatnot. Also there are no Parkruns which start with the letter X so the “official” Alphabeteer challenge only has 25 letters, but I reckon Halifax should count as a legit alternative. And if a real X ever starts up, I’ll go do that one.
Anyway. Here’s what I knew about Halifax Parkrun in advance.
Oh. Bugger. I mean it shouldn’t be that surprising, Yorkshire in general doesn’t have much flat ground in my experience. Anyway, I’ve been training hills recently and even crowed about how great it felt to run 2.5km straight up in Seattle. Maybe it’ll be OK!
Got to get there first though.
1.5km warmup towards Parkrun
Out the hotel, turn right, turn left, run past Dean Clough Mills. So far, so downhill. But then it goes up, and up, and up, and up. Got a bit confused at a confusing junction so paused briefly, then had to wait for traffic, then ran up, and up, and up some more on the wide pavement next to the main road. Gave up at 1.5km because it’s a kind of nice stopping point and because my lungs were not happy. Did I mention I was a bit hungover? I was a bit hungover.
34m elevation gain might not sound much to lots of people, but it’s a lot for me in 1.5km.
The on-foot instructions provided by Halifax Parkrun are detailed, turn by turn, yet I still managed to not quite folow them. Nonetheless I made it into the Park in plenty of time, found the start and enjoyed the sunshine.
Halifax Parkrun
First timers briefing was a short description of the route and not much more. Main briefing, well, I can’t tell you much about what was said. Before the run director started the normal one he introduced someone who wanted to say something, I think maybe for charity? But I don’t know because she was drowned out by a load of overexcited dogs who spent 5 minutes constantly barking and squealing. Couldn’t make out anything from either speaker, I applauded when those who were nearer did so – for volunteers and milestones and stuff, y’know – and then away we went… uphill.
I wasn’t going for a time or performance. All I wanted to do was not walk any of it. The start is uphill but not for long, before it goes into a long downhill part of which is on a half-cobbled, half-trail bit. At the end of the long downhill is a long uphill, after which there’s a short and steep downhill to a 180 degree turn into, obviously, a short and steep uphill.
Repeat that 3 more times. Well, not the short-and-steep bit. Overall it’s three-and-three-quarters laps, finishing at the top of the long uphill. Harrison’s Hill, it is.
Go me, I didn’t walk. But lots of people did. I overtook quite a few people and lapped some, not hard on an almost 4 lap course of course. I also got overtaken a lot, because I was really trying to keep as metronomic a pace – well, as consistent an effort as I could all the way round. Didn’t get carried away on the downhill bits, didn’t get beaten into submission by the inclines.
Being 4 laps, Strava went mental with segments and achievements – obviously, I got my best, second best and third best times on all of them.
Finished with a time of 29:26, which I was really surprised by. Didn’t look at my watch once and I thought my pace was way slower than that. It’s faster than the conversational pace runs at Broadwater earlier in the month. Yes, it felt non-conversational because of the terrain but anyway, I was chuffed with it. I’m serious though, there’s literally no flat bits. Here’s the terrain graph:
And also possibly the best GAP difference to actual pace I’ve ever recorded.
Cool down: 1.5km back to the hotel
An ominous message from Helen was ominous. Google maps showed me a path down to the main road that was a pretty significant shortcut home, but the path doesn’t actually exist so ended up making me walk further than necessary. I wasn’t going to run back at all but having lost a bunch of time, and remembering it was mostly downhill, I ran the exact same 1.5km as the warmup, in reverse.
I forgot that this meant finishing on a steep uphill. That wasn’t fun.
Helen’s ominous message was that we’d run out of shower gel in the room, so I asked at reception for some and they said they’d send someone with some. 15 minutes later, stinking up the room really badly, they still hadn’t so I popped my head out and asked a passing member of staff. He said they’d been having trouble with deliveries and might not even have any. Err! But then a few minutes later he came back with enough to fill ours for the next 3 mornings of our stay. EVERYONE was thankful for that.