The Comeback Continues: A Pain Free parkrun

The third trip to the physio mid-week confirmed that I am now able to start running again, albeit a gentle reintroduction. College was unexpectedly cancelled on Thursday evening, so what better than a cheeky 2 mile assessment instead to see how things where. The two miles turned out to be quite tough going. I tried to keep a steady sub 10 minute mile pace and found it difficult on the return leg of my route back up the incline. But I did it and that was the main thing.

So Friday night came along and with a healthy looking volunteer roster, Saturday would be a parkrun day for me! Number 3 of 2012 - target for this year is 18 parkruns (compared to just 7 in 2011). Martin Hancock was the day's Run Director, so my job beforehand was to make sure that the finish team were up to speed. Target today was to complete the 5km route in one piece (and not lose my St Patrick's Day hat or choke on my newly acquired ginger beard). A steady pace would be required and a sub 30 minute time would be a bit too much for me at this time.

Photo by Kev Baldry

The run began with me at the back with a slow start. Once the 1km marker appeared I then thought about upping the pace a little bit, looked at my Garmin and no display - it had died on me. Oh well, not to worry, I'm not after a time anyway. So off I plod at a comfortable pace. All was going well until I got to dodgy corner on lap 2 - a car was working its way through the runners en route to the Parkridge Centre. The driver looked rather worried, so I stopped running and marshalled him through, costing me 60 seconds on my time. Anyway, off I went again, thanking the marshals as I went through as a good parkrunner does. With 400 metres to go there were about half a dozen people only 25 metres in front of me, so I started to pick up the pace a lot more and then at 200 to go turned it into a full sprint and took the lot of them - very satisfying (sorry!).

Overall a successful run, but no idea of my time. I thought it was about 32-33 minutes, but the official result was a surprising 29mins 28s. So I am very surprised how well I did - I felt really good on the run and felt no discomfort. Hours later there was no after affect or sore hip to notice. A great day indeed - the comeback continues.

With the success of my parkrun on Saturday, Sunday had the temptation of another run. But that would be too much too soon, so to satisfy my need to do something a trip to the bottom of the garden and a 500 stroke row on the rowing machine was the non-impact exercise to keep me going.