Morning Run: Some 25's at parkrun

steevc just finished a 8.83km run, that lasted for 71 minutes.
This run helped steevc burn 619.0 calories.

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Description from Strava:
It has warmed up a little. I almost went out without a second layer, but decided I might still need it. I had a gentle jog up to Henlow Bridge Lakes where I could see lots of people arriving. It was looking a little muddier than last week, but not too bad. I think trail shoes are a good idea for these conditions for some extra grip.

I had a chat with a few people at the start and found out at least one person reads what I write on Strava (hi Joanne). It gets copied over to Hive where more people see it along with posts I write about music and other topics.

It was a bigger field than last week, so I was not likely to finish in the top ten again. It does give more chance of finding people to pace me. I know they say parkrun is not a race, but we compete against ourselves and want to improve. There was various overtaking on the first lap as people found their pace and then spread out a bit. I still tried to keep some in sight ahead of me. There is one guy who usually beats me who I thought I could keep up with. On lap two I passed his, but he came back for a while before I got ahead again. That gave me an incentive to keep pushing.

I could feel the mud building up on my shoes. That extra weight must make a slight difference. I do wonder how much mud people take away with them each week.

When it gets to the last lap I feel like I am nearly there, but it is still about 2km. On the straight before the last corner several people suddenly came past me. I do not look behind, so had no idea where they came from. By then I was just trying to keep going and did not have much left to sprint for the finish. I did speed up a bit.

As I crossed the finish line I heard a timekeeper say '25', but they are tracking the places rather than the actual time. As I log the who outing I was not sure of my finish time, but someone said they had been around 25 minutes and were not too far ahead of me.

As I jogged home the road through Arlesey had been closed due to some pipe being laid. That will cause some chaos. I saw some cars have to turn around as they had not believed the signs.

When I got home my watch sync'ed to Strava and showed a good time for the parkrun. When the official time came in it was a little slower, but still comfortably my best of the year. I have been hoping to get an age grading of over 60% and made it this time. I still want to go quicker and there will be plenty of opportunities this year. I ought to try a different location as some courses are quicker.

I am happy with my performance today. I need to do some jobs today including fitting new garden gates and prepare for a band session tomorrow.

Run free!

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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/8541140699

About the Athlete: Older guy trying to keep fit, but still hope to go quicker.

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