Parkrun #26: Whitley Bay, run 2

Back to the Spanner today for my second run at Whitley Bay. Location this time was decided by the fact that John Renney — colleague and one-time steeplechaser running for Great Britain at junior level, don't you know? — would be there with a mate. He reckoned he'd not be running due to injury... then went and knocked out an easy 25-minute time! Not bad for a 56-year old. 😂 Was still great to share the event with him anyway and he's super-encouraging, which is lovely. Cheers, John — hopefully see you there again sometime.

Looking south towards the start/finish area and the restored Spanish City beyond

Anyway, enough of the ringer, what about my run? 😉 As I write this, I've still not got my time and it's nearly midday. The 5K app reckoned the parkrun servers were down though, so maybe that explains it. All I know right now was that my time was somewhere between 25 minutes and 27 minutes — if we can assume that the pace runners did their job well (there was no 26-minute pacer present). I think that alone would mean it's my best time since January. Fingers crossed.

As for how it felt, I think I'd describe it as "tough". Any run that involves a good deal of seaside promenade always feels like it should be described as flat, but it's not entirely so; there are 6 short uphill sections to tackle overall (3 different bits, over 2 laps). Still, it is, on the whole fairly flat. It's also the scene of my second-best parkrun time (26:08), only a second slower than my overall parkrun PB. But... tough it was.

Looking north past the skatepark to the St Mary's Island in the hazy distance

For a lot of the run, I had sight of the 25-minute pacer ahead and while he had a good 50 metre lead on me almost from the very start, I tried to minimise how much he got away. Easier said than done. I was breathing more heavily than usual throughout the run today, which was a decent indication that I was pushing myself. And unlike the last time I was here, I made a conscious decision to "maintain the effort, not the pace" on the longest of the uphill sections at Briardene, with the hope that I'd not ruin myself for the following flat section. Not sure it worked, to be honest. 😂

By the time I got back to the second-last downhill section leading to the second-last ramp, I realised I'd lost sight of the 25-minute pacer, which was a bit gutting. A bit of mental gymnastics and I realised that if I wanted to challenge my PB here today, I'd need to let him get no more than about 200m ahead of me. I'm really not confident I achieved that, so right now, I'm just hoping that the text, when it comes, will tell me I got around 26:30. For now, I'll leave the write-up here. I'll update it later when my time finally comes in. 🤞

UPDATE:

YESSSSSSSSSS!!!! GET IN!!!!

God, I've waited so long to even get close to a personal best and I only went and bloomin' smashed it today. Time: 25:39.

Yep, twenty-FIVE minutes and 39 seconds.

Oh my giddy aunt, I am so over the moon, I'm welling up. Let's move on from here. That's another 2023 goal achieved, but there's still the sub-25-minute goal to go for. Let's do it. 💪