Short and Fast!

Two 5k races in my start of shorter racing.  

After two false starts to doing my local Parkrun - first one I intended to do I didn't get a good night's sleep and woke up not in the right mind set so did my effort session instead.  The following week I turn up to do the Parkrun to find it has been cancelled due to an event taking place in the forest!  I had checked the website but obviously didn't look properly!  So I find myself on the start line on 12th July not knowing what to expect at this short distance!  I last did my one and only Parkrun in Delamere in September last year when the course started and finished in a different place.  Whilst warming up I'm asked what time I'm expecting to which I reply sub 18 would be nice!  Last time I was just outside of 18 minutes.  I'm then told that this is quite a bit harder than the old course and getting a sub 18 would be good going!

I start off and there are 5 of us including quite a young kid!  He didn't last longer than 400m thank god as I wouldn't want to be beaten by a kid!   So then there were 4 of us and it felt so hard and fast.  Around 2k to go we were down to two and in the last 1k the eventual winner eased ahead and I had nothing left.  Pleased to finish 2nd (1st woman) in a time of 17.47 beating my course record from last time by 16s!  A good training run!

Two and a half weeks later I head over to Manchester to do the Sale Sizzler 5k.  After the Parkrun I feel ready for the pain that is likely to be there from the start!  It starts with 500m around the running track and with a field of almost 500 runners lining up its congested!  After the 500m around the track you then head out through some gates which with that many runners is quite tight.  A few girls were ahead of me at this point and when my garmin beeped the first km I was a bit faster than planned at 3.10!  I knew this was too fast but by this point I was overtaking men and a couple of girls so although I'd started fast so had many others.  Its a good course once it thins out a bit.  I finished in 2nd place in a pb time of 16.56.  So pleased to get under 17 mins and although over the years I have hardly done any 5k races it feels like a long time coming!  

Speaking to my coach a few days later he slightly told me off for starting so quick even though I explained that if I hadn't I think I would have gotten caught up behind slower runners.  He thinks that I could have done a 16.40-16.45 with a more sensible start.  Well hopefully I'll get that chance in a few weeks time.