Midweek: the Byker Link (disused railway line)

Obligatory introspective opening lament: another midweek blog post with no intervening parkrun post: bummer! 😞 One day I'll make a chart or calendar of excuses... I mean reasons for not having done parkrun, but for now, back to this run.

Today's lunchtime run from the office was another attempt to avoid the crowds and better explore somewhere that until recently I didn't even know existed: the Byker Link. As that linked article says, it's a (dirty) green corridor close to the Ouseburn area running from Byker down to St Peter's Basin (and probably far beyond) that used to be an active railway line until the 70s. I first stumbled upon it when exploring the far side of Ouseburn on a run (which I don't seem to have blogged about, so it must be a while back) and I've been meaning to take another look ever since.


Byker Link, definitely not today and definitely not taken by me

No time for photos today though, as I was trying to concentrate on just getting back into running. This was my first outdoor run in ELEVEN DAYS. and I'm conscious I'll be losing form. All I needed to do today was get back into it with 5+ km run. While I didn't calculate the distance before I set off, I guessed it about right and hit 5km as I passed the law courts on the quayside on the home stretch.

While I wasn't really focused on my pace, I hoped I'd stay within about 5:30/km. I've still not checked whether I did, in fact; one moment...

INSERT HOLD MUSIC HERE

Okay, it seems I did 5:23/km for the first 5km, so that's a win. Secretly, I might've hoped for better, but it'll do. I certainly wasn't pushing as hard as I did going to Dunston Staithes and back, so 5:23 seems fair.

So yeah, it was a fairly comfortable but not too slow 5K. Goals achieved, I'll try to repeat that pace, or maybe a bit faster (unless I aim for further), this coming Thursday before finally heading to my 25th parkrun on Saturday (touch wood!).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Midweek: Weetslade Colliery fantasy parkrun

Image
Indulge me for a moment. There was a time, back in my early-to-mid 20s, that I spent a very large chunk of my spare time on the computer, playing and making mods (and modding tools) for the Geoff Crammond Grand Prix games. While I had practically  zero social life (at least, in meatspace), I still look back on that time fondly as the most intensely creative period of my life. Turns out I even made car livery textures. Pleased with the rear wing of the Viz car! 😂 The thing I most enjoyed doing was imagining and creating 'fantasy' tracks. That is, purely imaginary circuits that you could then race. Which brings me onto this post and run. In recent weeks, I've been playing around with the idea of "If I could create my own parkrun course, where would I do it?" . Firing up onthegomap.com , finding local parks, and mapping out a 5K course has given me a feeling a bit like making F1 tracks back in the day. And tonight was my first run on one of the courses I've pu
Read more

Parkrun #25: Chopwell Wood

Image
Tell me... can you feel the milestone? Ohhhh yes. TWENTY-FIVE! T-shirt incoming! 😁 Aaaanyway... back to the run. First time at Chopwell Wood and it was HARD . A few months back, I watched a YouTube video of some guy doing this course and... well, it didn't look too hard. He talked through the fact there were uphill sections, but in all honesty, they looked pretty easy. In hindsight, maybe it was just that they were easy for him and the camera wasn't showing the true extent of the hills. (He got a time of 23:50, btw. 😲) Whatever, it was definitely hard for me . Possibly the hardest one I've done, in fact. The walk to the start from the car park (seen above) was pretty typical of the trails we'd run: mostly gravel and small stones bedded nicely into mud. Nothing too squelchy, so mostly a decent running surface, though there were a few sections with larger, more rubble-like stones, but mostly smooth ones. Prior to turning up, I'd been a bit
Read more

5 months in with my Brooks Adrenaline GTS 22 shoes

Image
Summary : my Brooks trainers have worked miracles in the last 5 months and I couldn't be happier with them. Well, maybe if they'd been cheaper. 😉 And maybe a bit lighter. About 6 months ago, I splashed out a small fortune on the most expensive trainers I've ever bought. It was purely in the hope that they'd help with the pain I felt in my feet during and after running on even slightly uneven surfaces. That pain had made life outside of runs a bit miserable, with me unable to go around the house in stocking feet. After a run like that on the Town Moor, with its stony tracks, it could take months for my feet to get back close to normality. Even just walking on those surfaces in my old shoes caused pain. This was seriously limiting where I could run too. It was time to try something new, especially as my Nike Runallday were starting to feel like they'd suddenly lost a lot of their cushioning. In the end, I ventured into Start Fitness in Newcastle for gait analysis a
Read more