March Training & a fab parkrun!

March training totals

• Miles: 91.82
• Number of runs: 18
• Average Pace: 09:54 min / mile
• Races: 2

Hull parkrun lap 1

March has been a good month! An excellent mileage month and I’m on target for my aim of 1000 miles in the year. I had a great run at Dalton Dash, I’ve run parkrun four times (2 different locations), I’ve run in London and I’ve increased the distance of my long runs.

Weight – I have finally managed to lose a bit of weight. I’m about half a stone down so far – and have around a stone more to lose. Whilst I knew it would make a difference to my running, I’m amazed at how much already.

Hull parkrun – 30th March 19.

A few friends were planning on visiting Hull, which isn’t that far away for us, so we decided to join them. I know Hull is a fast course and I went with the aim of not looking at my watch on the way round, but running to feel. I wanted to push, but not absolutely all out. I wanted to find out what my relatively comfortable pace could be – ideally a sub 27 min.

It was very busy!! Hull has a very wide start which helps, but still pretty manic at the start and I find it difficult to find my own pace initially with so many people around me. But I made an effort to not get pulled along and try and settle down. After around half a mile I realised that I was keeping pace with two guys running just ahead and decided to try and keep with them. And I did – until around the two mile point when I slowly overtook one of them. I was breathing pretty hard by this point, but still comfortable and really pleased with how I was running. The aim now just to keep the pace until the finish. Over the line, stop the watch…… 25:08 !!! Where the hell did that come from?

Hull parkrun results

To put this into perspective, my overall parkrun PB is 25:07 – set in 2015. I haven’t run a sub 28 since August last year.

Apparently half a stone less in weight means I can run 3 minutes quicker!! (but how I wish I’d pushed that tiny bit more and got my overall PB!).

I actually thought I’d lost the ability to ever beat my PB – I’m now the wrong side of 40, seem to be struggling with pace and I’d kind of accepted that I wouldn’t be as quick again (maybe accepting it was the reason I’d lost the pace…), which is why I was so, so happy on Saturday to run like that, to know that I could still achieve those times. And imagine what I can do with a bit more weight loss!

Hull parkrun – Photo Credit – Dave Gowans

What does April have in store? It’s going to be busy! After this week I’m in London for part of each of the next three weeks – sometimes only one night away, but next week is three nights. I might get one run in whilst I’m there next week, but there is lots going on so might not even manage that. Keeping track of what I’m eating also gets harder when I’m away, but I’m aware of that and will try to be sensible – I really do want to keep up with the loss. The plan is taking the opportunity on weekends to get some longer runs in, the rest will just have to be flexible and fit in when I can. That does mean that I won’t be at club for the next couple of weeks either.

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