6:45am - Awake, washed, dressed
Nothing too exciting. Although I did check my twitter feed and found a message from @nickiclarke regarding a threat/offer/promise to follow me around the course with a high pressure water pistol. For anyone that doesn't know the background - I really fancy a RDp in heavy rain. We did have a few spots of rain today but nothing significant.
7:30am - In the car
First stop was the petrol station. When I first bought my current car I could just about squeeze £20 of petrol in the tank. Now it takes way over £40 to fill it - I'm not happy about that, I'm sure most of you have similar feelings about the price of petrol.
8:17am - Arrival at Warlingham School
Change into Kanadia's, get the baby ready for action, hit the loos!
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| itching to to sign up and get into the 10 club! |
8:40am - Warmup on the downs
Not as much as I'd like today, but loosened up well and felt good.
9:00am - Pre-race instructions / announcements
This week Kaye was race director so did the pre-race honours. Included in the speech was a bit about people cutting the corners. I'm glad it has been raised, I'm sick of watching people cut them! Honestly, what does it achieve? You might get a PB but you know deep inside yourself that you didn't deserve it. It'll eat away at you, stay on the course and earn it!!
9:02am - Race Start (0km)
Although I was hanging around at the front of the start line, somehow I ended up starting further back than I had intended. Once the race was underway I had to trample the long grass (it was just a few steps, I'm sorry) to pass some people until I found some clear space to settle into a good pace. I slowly moved up the field and by the time we had entered the trail section of the course I was in the top ten.
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| 1.5km-ish |
When we exited the trail section I had moved up a few more places. A few seconds later, to my surprise, I realised that I was in second place.
9:11am - Half-way point (2.5km)
By the time I arrived at the half-way point I knew that first place was out of reach, so I started to think about finishing second, it sounded good to me. However nobody mentioned that to the person in third that was quickly eating into my lead over him. Just after 3km he passed me. The worst part? He seemed so fresh and relaxed as he did it! grrrr... (I don't mean it! It was well run).
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| 4.5km-ish |
Quite memorable from this week was when I passed my wife on the second lap (she was marshaling) and she was shouting 'GIVE IT SOME WELLY!!' That was brilliant, it totally took my mind off the pain for a few seconds and made me smile! She also took the photos for the blog. ( thanks :-) )
9:21am - Finish Line (5km)
Then before I knew it it was all over. Another RDp completed. My 100% attendance record intact. After hanging around at the finish line until the last person, a gentleman in the 80-84 age group (impressive stuff), came in, I wandered over to the gazebo to have my barcode scanned and also had natter or two about, what else, running!
10:20am - The Good Companions pub
After missing the entrance to the car park due to some roadworks, we had a little detour before finally arriving at the post race venue. We had brought a bunch of bananas so we would have something handy to nibble on this week. We sat around, had coffee and lemonade, there were photos being taken left, right and centre. Matilda was being her usual entertaining self, eating banana skins, playing hide and seek and generally just being cute. Once the results had been uploaded we all had a chance to get our official results early. My time was 19:25 - a new PB (by 7 seconds)!
My stats:
Position: 3rd/63
Gender position: 3rd
Age Group position: 1st/2 (SM30-34)
Age Grading: 67.55%
Time: 19:25
2.5km splits: 9:32 / 9:53
Official Riddlesdown parkrun results page for event twelve
Today's turnout was pretty amazing considering the inaugural Nonsuch parkrun was taking place just down the road. I hear they had an incredible turnout of 199 runners.
So that's it. Another week, another brilliant parkrun.
steve.
(RE: the subject - it's not a spelling mistake)
