Week 42

Monday was an easy 4 miles with warm and cool down as a recovery from Sunday’s run in Birmingham.

Saturday, having already travelled to Portsmouth for a long weekend, was Portsmouth Lakeside parkrun - a bit rushed getting there in the morning with family and no real time to warm up and cool down - I ran freely and comfortable, but in hindsight 25 minutes was a little fast and a ‘tempo’ effort.

Sunday was race day - the Great South Run - A ten mile course around Portsmouth. The route was lovely, 20,000 runners, and a whole bunch of supporters made it quite noisy. The sun was shining too and the wind was still - both unusual for this autumnal race. I finished in 1:20:22 - a bit slower than my goal of 1:20:00 but perhaps doing a bit too much at parkrun the day before hampered my efforts, or indeed the Birmingham race the weekend before, I struggled with the last few miles and really struggled to find my pace and lock in on that and my splits show a gradual decline. That said I really enjoyed the trip, time with family and the run itself. I’ve run 3 of the Great Run series now and this by far was the most well organised, best medal, best t-shirt, and best supported event.

• 5.5 miles - easy club run
• 3.1 miles - park run
• 10 miles - Great South Run

Published 20 October 2019, with 243 words.