Midweek run: almost enjoying myself 😉

Whooooah there, steady on. Enjoying myself? While running? Surely some mistake.

Anyway, today was my last chance to get a second inter-parkrun run in and I was lucky that I had no lunchtime meetings, so I went for it. Having done Leazes Park on Wednesday, I figured I'd had for the other attainable park today: Exhibition Park. (I really don't count the City Stadium as a park.)

Looking across the frozen lake in Exhibition Park at the Wylam Brewery building

It's a little bit further from the office than Leazes, but I really didn't fancy the wind whistling down the Tyne again. Plus, heading north means I'm not giving myself a lazy downhill at the start of the run and I get to enjoy a downhill finish as I return to work. So, I headed out of the office and immediately turned down Worswick Street... which is downhill. 🤦

That downhill was short-lived mind and I soon made up for it as I headed back up past the Laing Art Gallery towards the Civic Centre and then uphill again past the Robinson Library on the Newcastle University campus. Through a couple of underpasses after that and I was in Exhibition Park, and that was the end of the uphills.


By this point, I was breathing pretty heavily of course, but that was pretty standard. More notable was that I'd not had a single "oh my god" moment. Yeah, the run wasn't easy — when are they? — but I genuinely felt like I was doing okay. The main thing deciding how far I kept going was the time it would take, not how my lungs or legs felt.

In the end, I chose to head up towards the Urban Green Café and, from there, chose to do a lap of the lake, past the Wylam Brewery. But that was as far as I went. I also had a brief pause to snap the above photo before I headed back. On the far side of the lake, I had a quick check of the phone to see how long I'd been going and it was 11 or so minutes. That meant I wouldn't be too far off 5K by the time I got back... if you can believe the GPS tracking. That felt pretty good, as I've done far too many sub-4K runs recently.


The Newcastle University arches, definitely not today

The route back took me past the skate park, through the Newcastle University arches, and along Percy Street back towards Grey's Monument and Grey Street. By the time I was on Percy Street I was already thinking about upping my pace. I hadn't checked my pace at all on the run, but I'd felt so good (it's all relative) that I was keen to finish well. In fact, it's only now as I'm typing this that I've just checked my average pace: 5:10/km. Very happy with that, even when you take the inaccuracies of GPS into account. Next run is tomorrow, of course: another parkrun. I'm now just hoping I can continue this good feeling into that and continue on an upward trajectory. 🤞

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