Midweek: a perfunctory 5K to Benton "village green"

Perfunctory's a good word, isn't it?

Perfunctory, adj. 

(of an action) carried out without real interest, feeling, or effort.

So yeah, this was an evening run, attempting to make up for my poor lunchtime planning; I thought I had a meeting-free lunch, but by the time I realised I was wrong, it was too late to squeeze in a run. In fact, I even left this decision late, starting the run just 5 minutes before sunset. So, no real time to drive somewhere interesting for a run; I just had to get out there. So I opted for a 5K-ish route I'd considered but not done before.


Basic route was a direct trot to, and past, the entrance to Quorum business park before turning left and following the edge of the housing estate past Longbenton High School. That then took me across Benton Village Green — possibly the saddest-looking "village green" I've ever seen —before heading north up Station Road and over the railway line via the footbridge to The Flying Scotsman. That's a pretty rough-looking pub and a quick check on TripAdvisor gives me a chance to cherry-pick a negative review for a spot of confirmation bias, as someone opines:

"[...] fight broke out and staff just stood and watched. Like the wild west in here."

LOLz.

Anyway, from there, it was straight back up to Great Lime Road, following that pretty much all the way home. Total run time was 27:40, for an average pace of 5:16/km. That pretty much matches how it felt: not entirely leisurely, but not a total struggle either. I honestly didn't feel like pushing myself all that hard; the run was mostly about just sticking to the routine. As I said, perfunctory. Maybe the next run will be more interesting. I still want to do the reverse direction of the Weetslade Colliery 'fantasy' parkrun course, so maybe it'll be that.

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