Training: running to work again

After Saturday's let-down at the Rising Sun parkrun, I took the opportunity to run into the office today. Having dropped off a set of clothes and my work stuff last night, all I had to run with today was my phone, my keycard and my house key. I mean, I didn't really want a longer run, but I don't think I'll get much time this week for lunchtime runs, so a morning run it was.

Photo of Gosforth Nature Reserve courtesy of Cain Scrimgeour. Saw a deer today. 🙂

And sure enough, when I first left the house, I repeatedly questioned whether I was doing the right thing. I'm really not a morning person and here I was, running at 7:10am. And almost straight away, despite the hour, I had to wait what felt like an age (about 20–30 seconds) to cross a road. Who are these people going to work so early?! From there on, however, it was almost uninterrupted running.

Despite the wait, the first kilometre passed by in a surprising 5:42. Second kilometre was better at 5:20 and then the third kilometre was 5:08 (though I didn't realise it at the time). By this point, all that was going through my head was "Ugh, I'm not even halfway there yet". In fact, I never really warmed to the idea of running in, all through the run. I just felt like I was taking a long time to get to work at a time when I'm really feeling the pressure to show results. Work results, that is, not running ones. 😂

Next came Matthew Bank, maybe 300m of moderately steep uphill. It's a moment in the run to just put your head down and moderate your pace a bit. To be honest, it's over sooner than you expect and not as steep as you expect either. And so it was. Luckily for my splits, Matthew Bank fell partly in the 4th kilometre and partly in the 5th. So my pace dropped to only 5:23/km and 5:21/km respectively rather than a single split taking the whole hit.

The rest of the run was just a drag down the old A1 — the Great North Road, Northumberland Street and Pilgrim Street. Pace there was 5:13/km, then 5:08/km and finally 5:07/km (the last being just 0.89km). Overall, that made for 7.89km in 41:52, which is better than I've ever done this (I think it's my 3rd time) and quite pleasing following the duff parkrun. In fact, if I'd kept this pace all the way up to 10km, that would've been a best-ever 10K time of 53:04, over 2 minutes better than last year's Great North 10K.

Aaaaand... that's probably it now until parkrun this coming Saturday. Assuming I make it to that, that is. 🤷‍♂️

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