The last thing I felt like doing on Friday evening was running a 5k time trial! A busy week at work, running every night last week and the smell of pizza cooking in the oven just before I left, did NOT help!
The event was the last in what’s called the Winter Time Trials Series, a 5k race organised by Poole Runners at Boscombe Pier. I’d done many of their summer series runs before, but with Boscombe being a good hour round trip from home I’d never bothered with the Winter Series.
Revellers vs Runners
A strange atmosphere contrasting two cultural opposites. A number of bars and restaurants surround the race start line on the promenade which, on a Friday night, leads to a juxtaposition of Friday night revellers and restaurant goers mixed with a crazy bunch of runners putting themselves through the mill on a Friday night for ‘fun’(?!)
A note following last week’s Parkrun warm up post, I did no more than a few stretches and a gentle 5 minute jog to warm up for this 5k.
A Personal Best!
I got a 5k PB of 18:39! A PB of just 7 seconds but a PB none-the-less. It’s not the PB in itself that made me happy but the knowledge that the extra training I’d been doing for the last 3-4 weeks was paying off. It was hard at Parkrun last week to be 25 seconds off my PB when I’d been doing all that extra training!
The Course
The course was as fast as they get, a straight ‘out and back’ on the flat seafront promenade. In fact on this occasion they had changed the course so it was out and back from the pier to the east and out and back to the pier to the west. I was a little frustrated at the end as, it being pitch black I wasn’t aware of where the finish line was a had way too much left in the tank at the end. I think I could have gotten my time down to under 18:20 if I’d paced it better but never mind!
Next Training
I’m off out right now into the Spring sunshine for the Long Sunday Run, for around 90 minutes/12 miles-ish.
