Race Report – Cannon Hill parkrun Event 25 - Equal PB!

I was looking forward to today's race with the hope of a good performance, possibly even a PB. I'd spent some time analysing previous runs at Cannon Hill parkrun and decided that I needed to concentrate on keeping my pace up between 1 and 1½ km and again between 4 and 4½ km.

Those basically equate to the stretch from the Red Carriage Bridge down the river to the 'Triangle' turn, and, on the last lap, alongside the lakes, past the MAC and round towards 'Fergals Corner' near the Edgbaston Road entrance.

Chatting to Josh, a young Birchfield Harrier I met at the Centurion GP last week, and then Grahame 'Running Machine' Cooper, I managed to let my Garmin lose it's satellites, and wasn't able to start my watch when Mary blew her whistle for the off.

Almost immediately I thought my legs felt stiff, despite a good warm-up jog and stretches. This, together with not being able to monitor my time, and more importantly pace, caused me to start revising my expectations downwards.

Nevertheless I resolved to do my best, and to keep my speed up in those two sections I'd identified.

Unusually, Fergal's Corner was unmanned today, but thoughts of his encouragement two weeks ago helped me again to kick on, although I didn't have the home straight dice I had then, and though I put in a decent sprint I was conscious that it wasn't to the standard of my PB run. Indeed I could see the guy I'd been trying to keep with around the 4 km sprinting away from me and having a great tussle with another runner.

After the race I took a gentle jog home, and was almost back when I realised that I'd left my jacket at parkrun. I'm hoping Mary or Gill will have found it and will keep it for me.

Relaxing later and looking back, it still felt like a fairly decent run, and I was thinking perhaps 20 seconds down on my PB. I was amazed and delighted, therefore, when my result came through - exactly matching my PB! Of course my next thought was about whether I could have put that little bit more into my finish, and whether, had I managed to operate the technology properly, knowing how close I was would have made the difference. Never happy!

I'm going up to York next weekend, and hoping to take in my third Leeds parkrun. Definitely no PB there, but I'd certainly hope to post my best for the course.