Well June stopped that trend well eventually. The first weekend I was all set to head down to Ayr when I got a delightful infection in my wisdom tooth which was extremely painful. It shouldn't have stopped me running but it did. I found sleeping hard and instead of heading to park run I opted for a lie in instead.
But things certainly picked up the next weekend. With the Mens 10k scheduled the week after I wanted to do a dress rehearsal to see how I get on with the 10k distance, whether it was worth doing the Mens 10k and to hopefully act as a confidence booster that I could cover 10k having not gone over 5k in ages. So I headed for Strathclyde parkrun nice and early. I must have got there about 8.40 and walked to the start where I broke into a gentle jog. I completed the 5k route in just under 33 minutes and actually felt ok. I then waited at the start for about 15 minutes for the main event to kick off. Starting at the back, I had exactly the same approach as the first 5k, just nice and easy. Not surprisingly my legs were feeling it pretty early on but I persevered and got round in 32 minutes. This is exactly what I needed. I now knew that I could get round 10k even if I did have a 15 minute break at 5k! I knew it was going to be tough the following week but at least I had that in the bank now.
On the Saturday following since I wasn't running down at park run. I opted to volunteer instead as a marshal. It was also a good bit of light exercise for the Saturday before Sunday's main event.
My mum very kindly offered to give me a lift to the Riverside museum where the event started. It is a point to point course, finishing at Glasgow Green. So I would have had to get a bus back to the start otherwise (thanks mum!) . I was a bit concerned about which pen I was in as I had put down 59 minutes on the form which would have been more than doable if I had actually done any midweek runs. But I knew that I was going to be over an hour possibly an hour 10 minutes. But luckily I was in the last pen out of 3. The announcer guy was good although I found it quite funny how he kept saying that the first pen of runners were going to do it in under 35 minutes. I had no doubt there would be a few that were capable of it but not a third of the field! In the end there was 4 runners out of 1,300 who dipped under 35 minutes.
Anyway back to the race. I was pleased that I found myself at the right part of the field - ie the back!. Once we got onto the road which runs parallel to the expressway the field spread out so you could run as fast or slow as you wanted. The first 2k I found very comfortable which was reassuring. The 3rd k I was starting to feel it a bit. Then the 4th k you go over the Kingston bridge which was a novelty as always. Going into the 5th k I kept having a war with my head as 5k is usually the finish line but today it was half way. The course goes back over to the north side of the Clyde and up Buchanan street, along to George square. George square was about 7k into the race and by now I was struggling. I knew 7-9k were going to be the toughest and I wasn't wrong. I used the usual mental tricks to keep me going like counting and lamposting (just focus on the next lampost).
This morning I was back at Pollok for my first attempt at a 5k since last months 29.14. I was all set until I got a text from my brother asking if I was going to Pollok at 8 am. He has not run for ages so I decided just to run round with him. His daughter who is 3 also ran the first km and the last half km with us which was great. A true star in the making. In between I think my bro was struggling a bit but he kept at it and got round without walking.
So all in all a good month :-)
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