What a lot of rain we've had these last few days! Enough to keep me inside, drinking coffee in my PJs ( CBDB 
) . This morning was different. I was awake before 8 (early for me), the sun was shining, it was calm. The Plan said I needed to do a 6k to finish this third week off, I haven't done a Parkrun since July so why not combine the two?
Genius idea! Run 1km to the park, stop for a couple of minutes for the briefing, then the 5k Parkrun, two birds one stone. It more or less worked. Don't tell Coach B, he probably thinks I just spent the whole run listening to him 
I was a bit late leaving the house so the first km was quicker than it should have been, and we all know that this is a bad strategy. The river was flat calm, like a mirror, under a blue sky. It was so pretty I had to stop and take a picture.
It was just under 1km to the meeting point so I knew I'd have to make this up at the end but that wasn't an issue. What I did find a bit alarming was the state of the course. Lots of it was under an inch of water and there were a couple of diversions to avoid patches where it was even worse.
I set off slowly through the park, across the sodden grass where the route joined the path. There was hardly anyone behind me. I couldn't even keep up with an older man who was walking ahead of me. Why was everyone so fast today? A younger woman was jeffing, overtaking me when she ran, then she'd stop and walk, trying to catch her breath. When the route got back onto grass she'd had enough of having wet feet and didn't carry on.
I surprised myself by running the whole course. The last few times I've done it I had to walk part of it but that might have been because the weather was warmer.
As I finished the first lap I noticed that one of the marshals was a woman I knew who had been a member of a record breaking Transatlantic rowing team. I congratulated her, and as I carried on was able to reflect that no matter how trying today's, or any day's, run might be it was nothing compared to weeks in a rowing boat, unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, with nothing around but the waves.
The second half of the course was faster than the first but it was hard work. Judging where to run to avoid mud and puddles or alternatively just going through them regardless. Both approaches had their advantages. I reached the finish line, not quite the last runner and that's good enough for me. My husband met me there, he'd finished five minutes earlier so I told him I needed to run another 100m to finish the 6k. It didn't take too long and I was finally able to slow down to a walk.
When I looked at my stats my heart rate was really high for most of the run and Mr Garmin has added 4 years to my age (still nearly 12 years younger than the calendar says) as my VO2 has decreased.
I didn't think I was fast today but comparing my 6k time to recent longer runs I was a bit quicker. The plan is paying off (though my Parkrun time was the second slowest I've managed). The mental and physical effort of balancing and paying attention to where I was going obviously took a lot of energy. When
Ironically, I did eventually slip over on the mud, as I was climbing up a steep short cut to the quayside instead of taking the path. No harm done, just added muddy hands to the muddy rest of me
