It was only the thirteenth time I had been out running, but Alison had persuaded me that it would be nice to do a Park Run. These are free 5K timed runs every Saturday morning at numerous venues around the country. There are 17 events in the South East and 29 in Greater London. Alison had already been to Milton Keynes and Black Park near Slough, and it was the latter where we arrived yesterday.
I had already run four and half miles on two occasions, so I felt fairly confident of managing the 5K. It was pretty chilly when the three hundred of us started off. Alison said she would pace me round with a target of under thirty minutes. I have to say that it felt really strange over the first kilometre, running with lots of people, and because it was somewhere completely different to my normal quiet routes, I felt as if we were going far too fast. In fact that was just my imagination, and soon the pace settled down to something more comfortable.
It was a lot better after half way when we were in our own space, and I could jog along on Alison's shoulder. We actually speeded up over the last kilometre, and I was ten seconds inside the thirty minutes when we crossed the finish line. I did feel pretty shattered at the end, but that was probably due to the occasion rather than the effort. I felt a lot better after the walk through the woods to the cafe for a bacon roll and a cup of tea.
It is really interesting to see the results after we got home. Everyone has their own bar coded tags that are then input into the Park Run database. I was 204th out of 303 runners, which seemed pretty amazing for a first timer. And if I had run only a few seconds quicker, I would have been the fastest of the five men over 65. Already I am sounding too competitive, when really it is all about running for fun. Or is it?
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