Parkrun warm-up?

Well, I hadn’t meant to do that.

A parkrun course PB on the day before a half marathon race is probably not a good idea as I may have blown my legs up before they’ve even begun. However, if my newly made up, unscientific theory about my running holds up, it may bode well. The hypothesis is: when I run after a break of a couple or more days, I always feel a bit out of breath. The following day’s run often (or is that occasionally?) feels much better.

I could have hung around at home waiting for the skies to clear and done a little four mile pootle locally. Instead, I drove to Birkenhead, with the ground looking very wet, and the wipers swishing away with abandon, in order to clear my lungs.

Whilst attempting a semi warm-up, I managed to put my foot in it when I shouted ‘Happy Birthday’ to the women tied to a number of ‘50’ balloons. I realised my error when I actually, properly looked at her. The number did not denote her premature aging, but her Parkrun milestone. She only looked around 30, but was very genial about my mistake, and I sloped off, red-faced to ‘Pensby Corner’.

This unofficial area on the path, a few metres behind the ‘Start’ line is, nearly always, very well demarcated by Ian and his colourful shorts and, currently, dayglo yellow trainers. On most Saturdays there is a nice huddle of Pensbos exchanging greetings, passing gossip, and today, showing me the elevation profile of the Helsby Half. I’ve since looked back at the last time I ran this race, back in January 2018, and the climb stats correlates to John’s picture. I think I must have suppressed the real memory of it as I had just thought of it as ‘undulating’, when in actual fact there is a steady climb between mile 5 and mile 11. That information should have held me in check for the Parkrun.

Yet, after the crowded first few hundred metres, my legs began turning over at quite a quick rate. It was a bit of a sneaky manoeuvre on their part, because my lungs did not start to register this clip until towards the end of the first lap when I started getting a bit of a stitch. I tried to breathe deeply to push it out and thought about slowing down a bit. The memo to the legs was obviously garbled as although my stride shortened a tad, the cadence essentially continued. Suddenly, I found myself getting closer to the final bend and the last home straight. Balloon woman was ahead of me by quite a distance luckily, as I didn’t fancy catching her up. So I was able to barrel down the final leg, with that nice feeling of flight, over the finishing line.

I may get a godawful time for tomorrow or maybe I’ll enjoy another course best, but for now I’ll enjoy the ride today.