Midweek: Walker Riverside Park (8K)

With a meeting-free day, there was time for another longer run at lunch today. Still desperate to find new patches of greenery, I headed out eastwards towards Cycle Route 72, which would take me to Walker Riverside Park.

You'd be forgiven for thinking the Tyne Valley were some lush green paradise looking at this!

Must admit, it was a bit of a boring, well-trodden route out along the quayside and past the Cycle Hub to St Peter's Basin. Really wasn't feeling it today, but it would have felt wrong to not do anything over 5K in the week before Sunday's Great North 10K.

I'd planned to maybe go as far as Pottery Bank and then just turn around, but by the time the cycle path crossed a bridge over a road about 24 minutes into the run, I figured I just didn't have time for it; I still couldn't see Pottery Bank ahead. Pausing the run, I checked my distance so far and it was about 4.5K. If I doubled that with the return leg, then even without going any further, that would be a considerably longer run than I'd intended to do. I don't want to be doing a near-10K run just 3 days before the 10K proper — especially given I've only done 10K once, back in April. Save my energy for Sunday, was my thinking, so I turned back there. Turns out Pottery Bank was probably about another 100 yards away, just around a corner. 🤷‍♂️

Overall, I did approximately 8km, though it's hard to tell when Google Fit gets confused by pauses and keeps changing its mind. But that sounds about right. Rather than running all the way back to the office, I ended the run by the Law Courts, which probably made the return leg less than 4km. And it also meant I had a decent warm-down. And avoided having to run back up Dean Street and Grey Street. 👀

I didn't love the run today. These longer runs (this is only the 4th I've done over 7.5km) can be pretty boring without some form of entertainment. The 10K I did was fine, as I had The Life Scientific and In Our Time to listen to, but without earphones, it's pretty dull. It's making me wonder whether I should earphones on Sunday, but on balance, I suspect I'll be plenty entertained by the adrenaline and just the novel experience of taking part in a proper race. And maybe the crowds, if there'll really be crowds. I mean, who really cares about the Great North 10K? It's the Great North Run that's the real draw.

Anyway, just one more run before Sunday now: a second go at guide-running at Rising Sun parkrun. And this one might even be my guidee's graduation run for Couch to 5K, which will be pretty special if so. See you then.

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