[If running stats bore you, look away now.]
I love parkrun. I love the weekly routine of it: same time, same route, same format, same mental reckonings about the results, same feeling of smugness post-event as I contemplate the rest of my weekend. I even like listening to the same album - Jools Holland's Piano - as I amble along. It begins with birdsong, and its mood is cheerful. I know roughly where I need to be on the course according to the track that's playing.
I've reached this equilibrium after a shaky start at my first parkrun in 2016: the one in which I lurched, without any warm up, around the Quarry and by the time I got home, had to crawl upstairs to my flat on hands and knees.
After that experience, I bought better trainers, and came up with the following internal monologues in an attempt to prevent further reckless behaviour: "It's just good that I'm up and out on a Saturday morning in the sun / rain / wind / heat, and that I'll finish the course without needing an ambulance. This is a run not a race. A personal worst is a different type of achievement. One day, I won't be able to move - enjoy moving!" I've used these mantras to run 133 parkruns, some of them in Wales, Poland, and Australia.
I stand by all these phrases, and my lack of ambition to change. But recently, thanks to regular running with my buddy Julia, at Shropshire Shufflers I've been managing a new thought: "It'd be good to run 5K in under 30 minutes before I'm 60." Julia has a watch which tells her what our pace is, and she brought round some ginger beer when I was showing her my photos of Australia recently.
I'll turn 60 in 24 Shrewsbury parkruns' time. Ages away. But significantly, today's course was the final occurrence of the current route. From next week, we'll be tested by an additional uphill section in a course that's intended to make things safer for everyone by slowing most of the c.700 participants down at the start.
The new thought has been taking effect. My time of 30:49 last week was a marked improvement, and fastest since 2017. All week I've been mulling over the ambition to try knocking another minute off my time, and the cautious part of me has been warning that it'd be hard to manage such a big change.
But I did. Parkrun this morning was 9am as usual, same place, same beautiful park, same large crowd. I chose the same music, and I made it round in 29:30. The only thing that was different was that I ran a bit faster. And that I'm drinking ginger beer to celebrate.
