As Park Run was cancelled on Saturday morning, I decided to do a 'freedom run' on Sunday afternoon - that's a run round the Park Run track but outside of the normal Park Run time. I'd peaked a couple of weeks ago at PR, with my time getting a few seconds worse in the following two weeks, not better. And I haven't been able to run for a full 30 minutes ever around the course - although on my first attempt I did manage 25 minutes but then had to walk the rest of the way. I still couldn't run the full 30 minutes, and the course was still icy in patches - so I walked very carefully over those bits. Don't want a broken arm or leg or anything else, for that matter! Instead of having to leap out of the way of over 1000 other runners as I do on a Saturday morning, I had to dodge hundreds of small children on their Christmas presents of motorized scooters and those boards you stand up on (or attach to a cart) and bicycles that they haven't yet mastered, so it wasn't the carefree solo run I had been hoping for! But according to my friend, Strava, it was the best 5K I had done (if only by a couple of seconds!) So I'm taking that as a personal best, even though a Freedom Run doesn't count towards my number of official Park Runs, and the time doesn't count. It is very encouraging to see, though, that I am making progress, even if it only a second or two at a time!
And while I was doing my 5k yesterday, my brother was doing a charity 10K in London - and only took 2 minutes more to do 10 than I took to do 5! I think it will be a cold day in hell before I can match his pace!