... round Tatton Park!
After slogging through the training runs, today was when it finally paid off. I drove the hour to Tatton Park for the Run Tatton 10K, and while it was misty and not particularly warm I found it rather exciting.... the Chip and Race Number had arrived in the post the week before, so after checking that I was doing it right I found myself wandering around a field trying not to get too cold having stripped down to the running gear about half an hour before race time.
There were about 1300 entered, and starts were arranged by what time you thought you'd finish - slightly depressingly in some ways I discovered that my 75 minutes conservative estimate had me in the last group! Still, a bit of warmup fun and then it was time to join my fellow back-markers.
In some ways it was good though because although we didn't actually cross the line until 5 minutes after the real racers had started, it also meant it was a lot easier to start off with a relatively gentle pace. Come 1.5km, I was feeling good, speeding up a little, and discovering that I was consistently beginning to pass people.... Endomondo seemed to be out of step with the KM markers on the course, but a total of 3% is I suppose reasonable....
And so I continued to pound along, continued to pass people, and even felt good enough to take a look at some of the scenery as I passed - it's a lovely place for a run! The course was pretty much all tarmac, a little bit of up and down but never more than gentle slopes....
It soon began to seem that Endo's prediction of the time I could do it in wasn't far off, to my surprise I found myself having done the first half in about 34 minutes and still felt strong; until Endo chimed in to say "you have reached your goal" albeit about 300m short of the finish! The last KM was the fastest, and the Chip Time has come out at.... 66:07, with which I am well pleased - I even managed to do a negative split for the first and second halves, I have my bling, a T-Shirt, tired legs, but an enormous sense of achievement - I can't wait to book onto my local 10K in the spring!
Thanks to all of you on here for the encouragement, I've been an intermittent poster recently I know, but it's meant a lot to know that there's so much support!
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
