The new shoes done good...

Well, I don't know if it was psychological, or if the stars somehow aligned, but my shiny new Brooks Ghosts, are shiny no more and set out their stall as the PBs tumbled.

First up, my fastest mile. A whole second off taking me down to 9:42. There is some dispute here as Garmin gives me 9:42 and Strava says it's 9:44, but I'm taking Garmin on this one.

Next up, and Strava and Garmin both agree, 40 seconds off my 5k, taking me sub 32 minutes for the first time at 31:55. And to top it all, despite the first 2.5k being all uphill, I managed the "perfect" negative splits for each of those 5k.

You'd think that would be enough, but no, there was still better to come. Again, Strava and Garmin concurred, and a whopping 6 minutes 53 seconds off my 10k time, at 67 minutes dead (and I pretty nearly was).

I've no idea where those numbers came from. I'd have gladly taken any one of them on their own, so tonight has been something of a shock to the system.

I'm going to shower and lie down now. I think I've earned it...

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So, this happened...

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Two years ago, having finally shaken of the tendonitis that had put paid to my first attempt at the Couch to 5k plan, I finally put all the excuses behind me, laced up my shoes that had been gathering dust since I unboxed them at Christmas, and started my running journey in earnest. There were a couple of "training runs" along the way, but I completed the programme in May 2019 and quickly moved on to JuJu's 10k plan which got me to 10k on 1 July that year. Before 2019 was finished, I'd get to 10 miles in October and my first HM in November and, by the time the bells rang in 2020, I'd clocked up over 500 miles. Then, 2020... Well, actually, from a running perspective, it turned out better than anticipated. Yes, OK, so the final parkrun was a year ago this weekend just past, and all the organised events I'd entered were cancelled or postponed until some indeterminate point in the future, but running, it seemed, was an escape and helped my cope with the whole...

Finding My Inner Runner

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