After missing the last 2 weeks, I finally made it to another Run England session with the Blackhill Bounders! I confess, I have missed them; I’ve only been going out with the fast group for 2 weeks (not including the two I missed obviously!), and it really pushes me outside my comfort zone and to go faster and further. My current goal is to hit a PB of less than 30 mins for a 5k and less than 1h5m for a 10k, this year if possible. The 5k is looking increasingly achievable, the 10k may be more of a challenge – the pipe dream is to come in at an hour, but at the current moment in time that might have to be next year! Time will tell. Expect lots of dancing if that happens!
The route we took today is one that I’ve not done with the Run England group before, but it covers very similar ground in places to my local 4km route – so it was interesting to see how I found these stretches with the faster group. I felt I kept up pretty well for the first half – and for the first mile I actually came in with an average time of under 10mins/mile for the first time I think ever! The second half, when we left Medomsley and back up the hills again I was starting to flag a little…I’m not sure I’ll ever be entirely comfortable with hills – I don’t think there’s a fell-runner in me anywhere!
The really big positive for me from this run – I got a new PB 5k time! I beat my previous best of 34 mins by 1m16s – giving me a new best of 32m46s! This really buoyed me up for the second half when I was starting to lag a little bit – and I have the optimistic hope that I’d have been in for a really good chance at getting a 10k best too if I’d kept it up for an extra mile instead of bottling it when the group finished! Given this was a hillier route than my normal long-run route by the river on the flat tow-paths – it’s really given me something to aim for when I go for a longer run this weekend!
