Fifth Cannon Hill Parkrun

I completed my fifth parkrun at Cannon Hill today, and have to say I am pleased with my progress.  I've achieved a PB each week, and have got my time down to 24:42 - just over four minutes quicker than my first one, six weeks ago.

One of the things that I'm most pleased with is not just the time (although I'm quite smug about that too...) but is how I feel after a race.  The John Wayne days are long behind me, and I can go running the next day if I feel so inclined...  I'm very rarely inclined, but that's not that point!

You can see the Garmin data of my latest run here.  The blip at 0.6miles was where I accidentally stopped the workout by pressing the wrong button on my Garmin.



I'm not sure why my pace was so erratic.  If you compare it to the previous week (below), I was up and down like a yoyo!  I had my Garmin set to display average pace, rather than current pace which might account for it a bit, but this was the same setting as the week before, so there shouldn't be much difference.  I think last week I started out at a steady pace, and so my average pace was always really my current pace too - whereas this week I started out rather quickly which always meant I had a surplus on the average pace front, so it was hard to know what my actual pace was, other than by watching how quickly (or otherwise) my average pace was coming down.

Obviously the difference scale graphs doesn't help...

Built for comfort, not for speed

If I had to describe my physicality in six words, then the above would probably be it.  I've always been fairly active, but married life, a desk job, and a love of food mean that I am not really the svelte figure that I would like to be.

So when my brother-in-law came to stay a couple of months ago and said he wanted to do the Cannon Hill Parkrun (an organised timed 5k in our local park) I decided against my better judgement that I'd take up the challenge and join him.

I was really pleased with my time (28:51), given that I'd done no specific training for it, and had only decided at 10pm the night before to do it.  And it's fair to say that I was bitten by running bug.  And even walking like John Wayne for the next week didn't dampen my spirits!