Finding My Inner Runner

Having given last week a miss on account of the fact that my legs were still feeling a bit sorry for themselves after taking on the Yorkshire 3 Peaks the day before, today it was back to my familiar stomping ground of Vogrie Country Park for the second time since Parkrun returned to Scotland a fortnight ago. Last time out, I set an all-time Parkrun PB of 25:58; this week I was a wee bit slower at 26:49 but, actually, I was happier with this run. It felt better, my pacing was much more consistent, and I wasn't dead on my feet in the finishing funnel. Maybe it's something to do with running in a group (which I almost never do) but it's funny that I can comfortably pace 10k - HM, but 5k often catches me out. It possibly also has a lot to do with the fact I seldom run less than 10k and today was only my fifth run below that distance this year. Anyway, I digress. It was a lovely day. The early autumn sunshine was pleasantly warm, the track was generally dry underfoot and, all in...

Only my second parkrun of the year, and my first back at Vogrie . Warmed up with a a bit of 1 minute walk/1 minute run intervals, made my way to the start, half listened to the briefings and then we were off. As usual, there was the inevitable need to not get caught up and head off too fast, but as I bounded gracelessly down the opening hill, I settled into my stride. First lap, nothing really to write home about. Kept a fairly even pace despite it being muddier than usual in some places, and pretty much before I know it, I'm at "Pam's corner" and heading into the home straight, ready to start lap 2. At about 3.5k in, I hit my nemesis. There is a long, slow, gradual climb. It's not steep. If you were walking you'd almost never be aware of it, but recently, for some reason, on my last couple of visits, I've ended up walking about 100-200m of this stretch. There are steeper climbs on the route that cause me no problem, but this bit seems to have got ...

Thanks to hectic schedule this past few weeks, Saturdays have either been spent doing rugby things, or been my rest day, so this was my first Parkrun on a few weeks. A brief, but intense downpour accompanied the pre-run briefing, but it stopped just as we started running in much more clement conditions. It was muddy and slippery underfoot, but that clearly wasn't too much of a hindrance as I posted my new PB of 32:12 for that route . The post-run coffee and caramel shortbread definitely seemed well earned.

This morning was a bit strange. I was moving along quite comfortably and about 3.6k in I suddenly switched, mid-stride, from running to walking. No transition, no struggling, no feeling out of wind, just switched of between one footfall and the next. It was odd. The only way I can describe it is it was if there was a brief block/airlock in the fuel line and once it was through the system, I was fine. I walked for about 30 seconds and then slowly got going again; building my pace back up, and had enough left to push the last 200m and knock 3 minutes off my previous time on this course, but that was still a strange blip. I should probably just put it down to being a glitch in the matrix perhaps. It's that or the realisation that I was at the farthest point on the course from the finish, so it was a long walk back...

So, having signed up for the Edinburgh Race for Life on 23 June, today I did my first ever parkrun at Vogrie in Midlothian. I was a little apprehensive as all of my running to date has been done on my own, out of sight of the general public. Having looked at the results page for the event, if I got round in anything like the 39 minutes of my two 5k runs so far, I'd be comfortably somewhere in the middle of the field. As tends to happen to me, while waiting for the first-timer's briefing, I bump into someone I knew at university (which means we hadn't seen each other in over 25 years). The hardest thing, was not getting caught up in the crowd and going too fast, but I found my comfortable pace eventually. Towards the end of the first circuit, I did get lapped by a couple of the fastest runners on the day, but I didn't worry about that. The second circuit was slightly slower than the first, but I had no complaints and I was definitely happy when I received m...