parkrun

Having unbelievably managed to stick to my post-marathon plan of improving my times over shorter distances (10K – 43:57, HM – 1:39:42 etc) and managing to get my 5K time to under 21 minutes (20:47) I thought it would be great if I could get under the 20 minute mark before the year was out, so after following some training advice of doing km repeats at slightly faster than goal pace, plus 400m intervals at even faster, I thought November was when I would try and actually go for it. The video above shows my attempt(s)! Spoiler alert – I did manage it with a time of 19:51 and I was over the moon, happy that I would go into my next marathon training block (for Manchester Marathon in April 2023) a much better runner (and perhaps more importantly, a more confident runner) than I was going into Brighton Marathon a year before.

Of course nothing is ever simple, and as I write this I think I’ve hurt my Achilles tendon, possibly from doing an interval session out on the icy streets in that unusually cold spell we had last week. Therefore I’ve had about a week off running and have decided to can the idea of trying to PB my 10K time again at tonight’s Chase the Moon at Battersea Park. It only hurts when I stretch it though, so I’m going to avoid doing that and maybe try and do a short easy run later this afternoon so what happens. I guess I’ll try and rest up though and stick to cycling over the xmas period so I don’t do anything stupid before starting marathon training on 2nd Jan.

Happy Xmas!