We’re away for a few days in Cheshire and after doing Congleton’s parkrun on Saturday, I was keen to fit in another run before heading home. Usually there’s a day where I wake up full of energy and head out at 730am. Not so this time. We had a full on hotel breakfast, including fried egg and hash browns. There was a window three quarters of an hour later…it was a risk that breakfast would not sit well but it was a chance I was willing to take. Run kit on, out the door.
Garmin was suggesting a tempo run with a pace target for two mile long repeats with a recovery five minutes in between. Since I was throwing caution to the wind with my pre run “nutrition” (!!!), I thought I might as well go all in.
The great thing about staying in a large hotel is that it takes ages to actually exit the building so I’d done my five minute warm up walk when I got to the gates. One mile easy pace along a county lane and I felt good. Really good in fact. Stroppy garmin even agreed giving me a super positive rating for my performance. It’s nice when it’s happy with me. The first mile push came just as I hit a hill. Surprisingly, it felt fine and garmin started shouting at me to slow down. I was happy to oblige. It was tricky to keep to the desired pace. The bill turned out to be a long one and the last quarter of a mile was hard work to maintain the same pace. I was glad of the recovery.
Five minutes seemed to pass quite quickly and it was go time again. I don’t know how, but I was at the bottom of a hill again! This time was harder to pick up and garmin thought I was too slow. Rude. I don’t think he knows about hills. I managed to push enough to get to the pace window and it took a lot of willpower to hold it. The hill levelled out. Surely some downhill was due but I think the hills must have been alive and shifting around to make it harder. The interval ended just at a lovely bridge with a nice view over the river (pictured). Finally, five minutes gentle jog back to the hotel and I was close enough to four miles to just carry on and hit that round number.
Really pleased with this run. Parkrun felt really hard all the way round and I was mainly relieved when it was over. This was absolutely an effortful run but I loved it and it felt like a really fun effort to give (mostly). It’s great to be back at over 6km feeling like a nothing special distance rather than a long run. There was even fast 5km in the middle despite the recovery interval. Less than 40 minutes for the whole thing and I was glad I’d done it. Sometimes the ones that on paper look like they’ll have you throwing up in a bush are the best ones!!
A recovery run and another PB
