Parkrun No.9 - 22km (another Parkrun PB, but no fruit spread!)

dannewton just finished a 22.01km run, that lasted for 180 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 1772.0 calories.

---

Description from Strava: Well, that title says it all really. I completed the Half Marathon distance of 21km (or 13 miles in old money). I squeezed in a Parkrun and managed to achieve a new PB time in that. And I popped to the shops on the way round and failed in my fruit spread search.

The only thing the title didn't mention was the temperature, so I can confirm for you now that it was Hot. It was quite warm to begin with at the start of the run, and only got hotter as the session wore on.

Leaving the house at 8:15, the sun may have been looking a little hazy, but I could already feel the heat building. I was heading down to Boultham Park ready for the Parkrun event at 9am.

In the post last week, I mentioned how I struggled to keep my heart rate down as I made my way down to the Park. This was because I had stayed up too late the night before, and then managed to leave the house late the following morning. The tiredness and the lateness meant I was rushing, and ended up setting off the heart rate alert repeatedly.

Today was much better. I forced myself to go to bed at 11pm last night (which is super early for me!) and then I was able to get up at 7am, giving me plenty of time to eat breakfast and get sorted so I could leave on time.

As such, I only set of the heart rate alert once this morning on the way down, and generally felt much better and more relaxed than last week

I arrived a little early in fact, and as I didn't want to stop moving, I get walking round the meeting point while all the other Parkrunners turned up.

Eventually there were 321 people stood ready for when the briefing began, and the central theme was:

"it's hot, take it easy, have fun, stay hydrated, don't over do it."

And I promptly chose to ignore all that!

Last week, I mentioned how I took the first 2 laps slow, and then bombed it round on the 3rd lap and almost beat my PB.

Today I decided it would be much more sensible if I try to keep the 3 laps more even, and so when the event started at 9am, I immediately started at a slightly faster pace to begin with a view of maintaining that for the first lap. On the second lap I up the past again by a little bit more.

The graph from Strava shows this.. the first 5 km was the 'warm up' heading to the parkrun. Then a little bit of standing around until the race start, and my average pace slowly increased all the way through into lap 3, where I started working hard, which led to a sprint finish at the 10km mark.

Did I beat my time?

I would have to wait until the text/email were sent in an hours time to find out how I had done.

Feeling pretty hot and tired, I started to head into town, and I was walking for a while until I got my breath back. It was becoming noticeably much hotter now, and whereas the Park had trees which provided shade, the high street had very little cover available.

I gradually got back into short periods of running as my body recovered from the race... and next on my agenda for this morning was to pick up some Fruit Spread for my partner before she returned to university.

This is what I was after:

Picture from the post earlier in the year

In my last post I had tried to pick some up, but the little Health Food shop was out of stock. The lady said she would order some in for me, and hopefully I could pick it up today.

Unfortunately it turns out that the wholesale supplier they use only have it in cases of 12, and aren't prepared to order 12 of them just so we could have 2 tubs.

I totally understand this by the way... I have a background in retail, I understand profit margins etc, and its not viable for them to order 12, just to have 10 sit on a shelf unsold.

It just means once again I have to go online again to find it, or maybe even have to resort to using Amazon (shudders).

After that disappointment, I started to carry on and finish my run (preferably before I completely melted!)

I admired the view of Lincoln Cathedral while I was heading back out of town....

...and then made the most of the shade alongside path following the water railway

This river goes all the way down to Boston, and the water railway is the path that follows alongside it (also all the way to Boston). When I get to this bridge I then turn of the path, and head alongside the bypass to make my way home.

It was hot and tiring, and I took several walking breaks as I was no longer concerned about the pace. Eventually I arrived home to to find the message below:

So it looks like I managed to take 30 seconds of my previous best time, so that's some to be pleased with. My body feels ok at the moment, but I suspect I'll be feeling sore and tired later, so will be just a gentle recovery run tomorrow

The lack of fruit spread is annoying though, guess I'll now go spend some more feckin' money on Amazon stuff... (no wonder the high street is going downhill!)

The rest of today is gonna be spent sorting a few bits out, and I have to start getting organized as my partner is heading off to Uni next weekend. My next post will be on Monday, so I'll see you then.

And fingers crossed the weather will be a little cooler and more comfortable to run in!*

---

If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/9813418738

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!)

This is an automated post by @strava2hive and is currently in BETA.