Parkrun #47: Town Moor, run 3

Holy moly, I'm back. 😳

My first parkrun in over 2 months was meant to be at Gateshead so that I could bump into the husband of a work colleague, but as usual even when I was regular, I was late getting out of the house. Luckily, on the way to Saltwell Park, I would pass the Town Moor, so I bailed out and took that option instead — despite the fact that I'm really not a fan of it.

As well as being just 1°C, it was a bit misty out on the moor first thing

As for why I'm not a fan, it's partly down to the stony tracks that make up half of the course and partly down to the sheer number of people taking part, which means that the start inevitably involves a lot of finding yourself boxed in. Mind, you could argue the latter reason is just sour grapes on my part, reflecting my failure to get a time under 26 minutes despite it being a very flat course.

Choosing your starting position to avoid the worst of the crowds also requires a bit of... well, dishonesty. The last time I was here, I dutifully positioned myself by the sign that said something like "Estimated finish time: 26–28 minutes". Funnily enough, despite getting a time in that range, I spent most of the 5km steadily passing people. People, that is, who should've started further back. This time, it was no more Mr Nice Guy. Instead, I started by the "Estimated finish time: 22–24 minutes" sign. For shame!

That sign shows I started near the (in theory) 22–24 minutes runners. I wasn't very honest.

Despite this, I still had to walk the first 10–15 seconds and, when not penned in, found myself passing plenty of folk again. The puddles were another added obstacle to getting a good time today and, while there's plenty of room to pass people off the track, doing so puts you onto some very uneven ground with the attendant risk to your ankles.

All that said... those pathetic excuses can't disguise the fact that I found it really tough today. And while I thought I'd probably ducked under 26 minutes for the first time here — and for the first time at any parkrun since September — the final reckoning showed I came home in 26:04. Aaaaaarrrghh! The curse of the Town Moor strikes again. I swear to god I'll get a 25 minute time here one day, but today wasn't to be that day.


The puddles we had to dodge in the first few hundred metres. Some people got plastered in mud.

But, despite the time, I came away from today feeling pretty pleased with myself. I'd pushed myself harder than I have done over 5km for a long time and fought off a feeling like death(!) around the 4km mark. It felt good to have really challenged myself again and I came away with my head held high. More of that next weekend, please. Or is that asking too much? 😁

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