Parkrun - New 5km PB

I am blogging a bit out of sequence today - I still have to do a quick race report on The Kinnoull Hill Race that I ran on Thursday 21st May.  This report is of the new 5km PB that I recorded on Saturday 23rd May.

I decided that I would give Parkrun at Silverknowes a chance.  The weather was fantastic, and I am told that the wind forecast was 3mph which is effectively the same as 'no wind'.  Wind, and specifically the headwind on the home stretch is the curse of Silverknowes.  I ran Portobello Parkrun last week and it was busier than I had seen it before.  The number of runners combined with the number of corners means that a PB is not really possible here or else extremely unlikely.  That's not a criticism of the scenic, friendly, Portobello run in the shadow of Arthur's Seat, it's just a pretty obvious fact.

So anyway, given the weather I thought I would grab the opportunity of running again at  Silverknowes.

Beautiful view...

Ruined!

I ran out hoping for a PB rather than expecting one.  I don't feel like I am running as well at the moment as I was at the end of last Summer, but there has been the odd success to make me feel like good things are possible.  I completed the first 1km in 3:52 and I was exhausted.  The second was completed in 4:04 which made me kick on with renewed effort.  At the end of 4km my time was 16:15 so I felt like a PB was not going to happen.  I tried as hard as I could anyway and crossed the line in 20:05.  A PB of 2 seconds and a very fast final kilometre!  Very pleased.  Clearly this is a pace of 4:01 per kilometre (even I can do that mental arithmetic) so only just over 1 second per kilometre to knock off before I can record a sub 20 that will be my first step towards a sub 40 10km.

'Accept"

Funny - I was speaking with Brian after the race.  He told me that on the last 400m he was thinking that if Usain Bolt can run 100m in 10 seconds, surely he could run it in a time that would have met his target.  This is unbelievable because I was thinking the EXACT same thing.  With 400m to go I was thinking if Bolt can do it in 10 seconds, surely I can do each 100m in 20 seconds?!  Weird!

Great day, great conditions, great PB.

Remarkably consistent.