You will be spared the feature length parkrun entry today as I was back at Finsbury Park, and it hasn’t changed since I was last there just over a month ago. The hill has not got any less hilly but it remains my favourite parkrun venue.
The most notable thing about today’s parkrun was that the hill did not defeat me and I ran the entire course with no walking, something I’ve never managed at Finsbury Park before. However, I don’t know if it was down to tiredness after my 10km yesterday or bad pacing, but I was actually a whole minute slower than last time I was here, when I walked the hill twice. I think my next target must be “run hill faster than walking pace”. One of my goals for the year is to complete Finsbury parkrun in under 35 minutes, but my time today was 36:42. I was lapped by two people, one more than last time. I am starting to think I am not going to get any PBs at parkrun until I finish marathon training… I am just too tired and sore to be able to run at full pelt!
The nice thing about being just that little bit faster than I used to be is that I’m still amongst a reasonably sized gaggle of people at the finish line and have people to have a little imaginary race with at the finish line and discuss hills with after token scanning. I’ve always been one of those people who has no small talk whatsoever but running, parkrun in particular, gives you a never ending stream of topics that you can gibber enthusiastically at total strangers with. And some of these total strangers actually end up becoming real life friends. I met some lovely people at the finish today and went home happy. I suppose that is more important than a PB!
7:07 