My First Ever Park Run…

I would love to say I sprung out of bed feeling amazing, the birds where singing and the sun was shining but it did not really work that way…

The reality was I over slept, it was 2 degrees and I was running around like a headless chicken and generally feeling really rough. On went the running tights, merino socks and top – I stuffed a little apple and peanut butter, downed a black coffee and off I went.

When I turned up and saw everyone all my ‘race fear’ feelings came rushing on, everyone looks so bright and fit in friendly groups. It was around 8.45am and it was bitterly cold so I started off with a very steady ‘pre run’ jog for about 5 minutes which I was really thankful for and I knew would make a big difference to how I felt as I often like to power walk/jog before my runs.

The time came to gather together and start, I placed myself towards the back because I knew I would be in the slower half of runners.  This was a bit of a mistake though as during the first mile I had to over take a lot of people to get into a zone I felt was comfortable.

As I don’t yet have a garmin and hadn’t set my phone to shout updates (because I’m a plonker) so I had to use people as markers to follow and then over take to try and hold what felt like a acceptable pace. What I loved the most was that the course was really flat and the marshals where constantly encouraging at every point.

Approaching the end all I could think is ‘I’ve done terribly – There are so many people there already, I hope this is not a complete personal worst’….

But I later found that there was 196 of us racing and I placed at number of 106 & 20th female with a time of 27.04 which I was not too unhappy with considering how rough I felt.

I think Park Run is something every runner should try to support, the website is super user friendly, the events are well attended (and we should keep that up) and it’s given me some much needed confidence to attend more events.

Have you ever attended Park Run? I sure think it’s a great way to stay motivated this winter…

Katie

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