The Colton Hurter 5K

No, not that Colton Herta, but yes, he is the reason I named the run that.

Herta in his IndyCar days. Photo blatantly pilfered from the BBC Sport pages.

So, last weekend saw the family visiting my father-in-law in Leeds and we ended up staying overnight in Colton, on the eastern side of the city. The weather was glorious — maybe a little too glorious — and I knew that Temple Newsam was within reach of our hotel, so a route was planned for the Sunday morning:


The route, as planned on onthegomap.com, which is still my favourite route mapping tool.

As it turned out, while it was only 16C at the time I ran, when the sun was on you, it was sweltering. In the end, I only just managed the 5K before the heat and the jarring nature of the run, with hard, rutted paths, took its toll on my left knee. While I did hit 5K, I cut the run short by about 250m to give my knee a break and to cool down a bit by walking the last bit back to the hotel.

The Avenue at Temple Newsam, heading downhill to a small lake before rising again to the hall

The route I ended up taking also didn't quite match the route I'd planned; I reckon I took at least a couple of wrong turns on the approach to the lakes. One of those resulted in me taking a short but rather sharp climb that probably wasn't necessary. And that ruined me for the rest of the run. That said, looking back at the elevation trace for the next ¾ of a mile, it was all uphill anyway, which I guess didn't give me much of a chance to recover.

The rest of the run after that — I'd done 4K by that point — was a bit less leafy and attractive, running through a housing estate and down roads, albeit some that still bordered the fields of the Temple Newsam estate.

One of the ponds near the Go Ape treetop adventure place at Temple Newsam

In terms of my pace, it was nothing electric. A 5:54 for the first kilometre followed by a largely downhill 5:41 for the second. On a better day, that probably should've been a lot quicker; I'm not sure what it was that meant I wasn't capitalising on the terrain this time. Maybe the heat, maybe the hard ground, maybe the terrible night's sleep I'd just had. Or maybe I'm just not training enough to improve. Anyway, the splits just got worse from there, with a 6:34 followed by 6:21 and 6:37 for a 5K time of 31:09 (if you can believe Google Fit).


Near the end of the run, looking back in the direction of the hall, not that you can see it.

So, that was last weekend. What of this weekend? Well, I may get out tomorrow morning, but we'll see. I'd best get to bed now if I want it to happen. Tara!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Training: riverside 4K

Image
While my knees and toe probably would've preferred more bike work, I was working in the office today, so went out for a short run at lunch instead. Given I didn't want to aggravate the toe too much in advance of Sunday's orienteering, I went for a fairly flat route. I also just wanted to get away from people and be somewhere calmer than the centre of Newcastle on the run-up to Christmas. Today's route took me past the Black Gate, then under the railway line and onto Forth Street behind the station. It was around this point that the gentle rain turned into a downpour and I was glad I'd put my fleece on. 😂 The rain continued on and off as I jogged past the Centre for Life and onwards to the Arena. The new phone wasn't giving me announcements of my progress (yet another thing to set up), but a quick check showed I'd been going about 7 minutes. From the Arena, it was rapidly downhill to the Tyne before turning upriver. The tide must've been in, ...
Read more

Parkrun #47: Town Moor, run 3

Image
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 wa...
Read more

Training: Blue House Roundabout & Little Moor 7K

Image
After 72 hours of headaches that prevented both parkrunning and an office-based lunchtime run, I finally got out again today and put in a 7km run that pushed the boundaries of an acceptable lunchtime (I started at 1:15pm). Still, I was back at my desk, showered and working again in under an hour, so I reckon that's... okay? The goal today was just to get to a patch of green that I'd not previously explored. I mean, given that the patch of green was just some grass next to my route into work, there wasn't much exploring happening, but still... it relieved my itch to avoid repetition. Oh, and the grass in question was Little Moor, a tiny corner of the Town Moor, isolated on the far side of the Blue House Roundabout . Blue House Roundabout (not today) looking remarkably traffic-free Before setting off, I'd not checked the map to see how far my target was from the office, so I figured I'd just get as far as I could in 20 minutes and then turn back. If I had extra time,...
Read more