Long running with a parkrun sandwich

Saturday 12th January 2012

Running (14.50 miles / 02:11:29 / 00:09:04 per mile)

An interesting approach to my long run today.
I intended to do about 13 miles and push the pace on miles 3,6 and 9 at sub marathon pace of about 8.30 per mile.

I had the brainwave to run down to the Queens parkrun 5K, do the run and then run home again.

As it turned out, it was just a bit under 6 miles down to the run, so the overall distances went up a wee bit today.

The run down went well, even though I felt a bit sluggish at the start but I am putting that down to the early start.

Once down at the parkrun, I waited inside so as not to cool down too much as it was fairly nippy this morning.
Off we went and after the usual first 200M or so and jockeying for position, I settled in to a nice pace and I didn't get passed the whole way round the 5K run.
I felt nice and strong and would have very comfortably done the stand alone race at least 2 minutes faster than my eventual finish time of 26 minutes.

I am not convinced of the accuracy of their timing at 26 minutes - I got it myself at about 25.20 but it is not really all that important.
http://www.parkrun.org.uk/queens/results/latestresults/

I grabbed a biscuit after the run, topped up the water bottle and headed for home again.
The run home is a bit more up hill so it did feel a bit tough in the last 2 miles.

On the whole I am delighted with how my parkrun sandwich went and the average pace at 09.04 is very pleasing and encouraging for my Sub 4Hr marathon quest. I am even more pleased that the 13 planned miles turned in to 14.5 and still felt god.

Luckily I am wearing jeans today as I decided to wear my compression socks for recovery and it is not a sexy look!!  Mmmmmmm NICE!.