Parkrun No. 8 - 21.5km (first Half-Marathon in a while!)

dannewton just finished a 21.67km run, that lasted for 167 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 1802.0 calories.

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Description from Strava:
Another Saturday, another long run... and after 3 weeks it was great to return back to parkrun

I've missed the last 3 weeks mostly due to sleeping in lol!

Today I made sure I was up early enough to attend it. The parkruns start at 9am every Saturday, so I need to be up at 7:30, so I can get sorted before leaving the house at 8:15.

However, one thing led to another and I didn't leave the house until 8:25. This meant I had 35 minutes to travel the 4.5km down to Boultham Park for the event. Ordinarily that would be easy, but with all my low heart rate training recently I am currently running at a slower pace.

The weather was flipping gorgeous this morning, with beautiful blues skies

Leaving the house forced me to run a little quicker than I would have liked, and which then set of the heart rate alert on my watch. My alert was set at 146pbm, and I spent most of the run down the hill to parkrun at 150-155bpm, with the watch buzzing an alert every 30 seconds

That was a little annoying although it was totally my fault for having to rush

I arrived at Boultham Park at 8:50, so technically I could've gone slower, but I couldn't afford to be late.

With 283 runners, it was a decent turnout, and after a quick 5 minute briefing we lined up at the start line, before setting off at 9:00

To begin with I wanted to keep the pace conservative and sensible, but even at a pace of 7:20 per km, by heart rate immediately went too high. It may have been caused by the lack of sleep last night, but I couldn't do anything about that now. I decided that for today I was going to ignore the repeated warnings on my watch and just run based on how I felt.

I still kept the pace slow for the first 2 laps, and then I picked it up for the third and final lap.

Lap 1 - 11:30 approx.
Lap 2 - 10:00 approx.
Lap 3 - 8:00 approx.

Definitely quicker on that last lap!

After 3 weeks of mostly slow sensible plodding, it felt great to open up and run at a decent pace for once!

I was huffing and puffing once I finished, and my heart rate was through the roof at 175bpm. I got my barcode and finish token scanned so I could get a finish time, and then I started to walk into town.

In previous weeks I have run straight home after completing the park run, but today I needed to pick up some supplies. I also wanted to increase the distance compared to recent 'long runs' and I was aiming for about 20km for today.

In the past weeks I've done roughly 15km in these runs, time to step it up a notch

Heading into town, I was still recovering from by parkrun effort, and was partly walking and partly running. I was aiming for a small Health Food shop, which I have visited previously. I was in fact heading to the shop for the same reason as last time, to pick up some more Fruit Spread for my partner to take when she returns to University in 2 weeks.

Picture from the post earlier in the year

This was what I was after, although I was disappointed to discover that the shop had run out. I guess I should have phoned first lol. The shopkeeper was super helpful though, and said she would order some in for me. Hopefully I will be able to pick it up next weekend if it gets delivered in time.

I did still buy another Flapjack thing though!

After a quick snack stop, I carried on with my run. As with previous weeks I headed down the side of the river....

...and then onto the Footpath along the Water Railway. I really like running down here. Its nice and quiet, and the views were lovely especially in the bright sunshine!

My legs had recovered from the speedy parkrun effort, and the lactic acid had gone, so I was able to do some more gentle running. However I was mindful that I was running further than I have managed in a while.

The last time I managed to run further than 15km was actually the Marathon back in March. And with this in mind I took small but regular walking breaks on the way home.

The watch was still Buzzing every 30 seconds with a Heart Rate alert, but I had stopped paying attention by this point!

Arriving home, I realized I had managed to complete a total of 21.6km which is about the distance of a Half Marathon.

I also found the below message:

I wasn't able to beat my Parkrun PB from 3 weeks ago, but 29:19 is still a reasonable attempt. And I suppose if I had started running a little quicker from the start instead of sprinting the last km I might have fared better. I'm not fit enough for that yet, though I am working on it!

Today was a productive session, with a decent parkrun result and also completing a run of over 21km.

The only frustration was the missing Fruit Spread haha! Hopefully I'll be able to pick that up next weekend!

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If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/9767026341

About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)

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