Parkrunning

Last weekend I did my 10th recorded Parkrun so thought I'd reflect a little on it. I started a few months ago as I'd been making good progress with bringing my weight down and the strength work I do with a personal trainer, I thought maybe I'd be up to do a park run. The distance was 5km but I figured I regularly do walks of that length and I thought I'd be able to handle it.

I was wrong. On my first attempt I managed to jog about 1.7km before I had to slow down and walk for a while. I did jog some more stretches but I think I walked at least half the 5km. Since then I've been aiming to improve how far I can go without walking, figuring once I can do that I can start to work on improving the overall time. I've done 3 all the way through now, and I feel at this stage barring something external I should be able to continue doing so. 

Some lessons learnt along the way are that I can't do a 5k run after a night shift. My thinking had been along the lines of "I've done exercise after work before, I usually stay up until a few hours after the run is done, and I'll have a nap around 3am just to be safe so I should be right." This was incorrect. I got my worst time ever, the amount of walking increased instead of decreasing, and while I was alert during the run, the commute home I was a zombie staggering through the Valley.

There was also one run where I turned up mainly for spite. During the week I'd been speaking to someone at work and explained due to a combination of traveling away while on holiday and some sickness I'd gone nearly a month between runs 2 and 3, and they made a comment along the lines of "I didn't think it would last," which did indeed get me to the park Saturday morning. I would have gone anyway, but it was an extra bit of motivation. Fortunately, most people have been more positive about it, and there was one week where I encountered my boss's boss at the run (well, during the run I heard someone yell "Hi Kevin" but had no idea who it was, and then later in the week at work they came in and asked if that was me at the Parkrun which solved that mystery as I'd had no idea who it was at the time since they were on the return leg and had passed me before I could even look to see who it had been).

As is usual for myself, I don't really interact with anyone there. I usually get there 10 minutes before the start and there's a run briefing and then the run itself. Afterwards I'm too exhausted to be social, although I usually cool down by taking a walk through the markets and getting some breakfast before heading home, but that's again a solo thing.

I haven't  gotten into the Parkrun tourist thing yet where you go to Parkruns at lots of different locations (someone I used to work with does this). All but one of the Parkruns I've done have been at New Farm Park, the exception was a Christmas day run at Southbank since New Farm Park didn't hold one on Christmas day. So people at work have said they're looking to get started, and if they do I might make a trip to do a run with them, but we'll see if/when that happens.