Today I ran my first parkrun. If like me you’ve never heard of them: parkrun organise free, weekly, 5km timed runs around the world. They are open to everyone, free, and are safe and easy to take part in. Pretty simple really. You just register for free on the website for a personal barcode, print it out then turn up and race. You just register as a runner, not for individual races, it’s up to you which races you attend....
Back in April I challenged myself to run 5km in under 19 minutes and gain 1.5 stone by the last Bridge Inn 5km of the summer. Tonight was the night. Being too busy disorganised, I didn’t realise that tonight was the deadline until today. If I had realised I would probably have prepared a little better. Two days ago I ran my first Kymin Dash, a ~7 mile run but includes a decent hill....
Last night I ran a pretty shonky 21:33 (~7m/mile) for the Bridge Inn 5km. I used to be faster but haven’t really been running since last year. I also need to put on some weight because at 6 foot I’m pretty puny weighing in at 10st 9lb. According to the NHS weight calculator I should be over 12 Stone. I’m setting myself the challenge of knocking 2.5 minutes off my 5km time (I’ve never run it under 19 minutes before) and reaching 12st 2lb before the Bridge Inn 5km summer series finishes on July 27th (the website hints there’s one in August but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong…)....