Race Report – Cannon Hill parkrun Event 31 - Pain and Pleasure

The sun refused to make an appearance this morning, but 115 runners gathered in Cannon Hill Park, 19 of which were welcome first timers. No fewer than 42 achieved PBs, and despite 2nd to 5th all setting new bests none could come close to Warren, who returned from South Africa I believe, to romp away with the win and though he missed his PB by three seconds still got round in just 15:18. The course record, however, remains with one Daniel Clorley who has only ever done one parkrun and finished in a gob-smacking 14:59 in January.

As has happened all too frequently for me lately, my race started badly, quite apart from not managing to start my watch because I'd left it too late to find satellites (too busy gassing). For the first ½km (coincidentally all up-hill) I felt terrible in my legs and watched people I usually compete with running away.

I'd met up with Derek, who I've chatted to on the Good Run Guide forum and knew to have similar pace to me, and he was quickly a couple of hundred meters ahead.

I spoke a few days ago about using my experience of decent results coming from bad starts to change my mind set when it happens and to convince myself to push through the pain.

I tried it today, but it was hard! Not having my watch telling my how I was doing I could only go by how I felt, which wasn't good. About a kilometre in I managed to reset my watch to clock time. Assuming we started on time (we're usually pretty close) I figured I wasn't going too badly, nevertheless I wasn't confident that I could keep it up. It wasn't until I started catching a few runners, around half way, that I realised that I was actually feeling a bit better.

Rounding the fish pond for the second time and starting the last hill, on the slowest part of the route for me, I thought about previous performances here and how my best times came from pushing up the hill. I also thought about Fergal up ahead who I knew would be yelling for me! So, I focused on the runner in front and went after him. Then the next, and the next...

I flew past one guy coming up to Fergal's Corner and heard Fergal telling me I was going faster than on the first lap, which I already knew but it was good to hear confirmation! I caught and passed a few more, including Derek, with whom I managed to exchange a breathless word or two, and one chap who I just pipped at the line (we were given the same finish time).

I just about got my breath back in time to see Jim come in, clocking another PB - his fifth in a row at parkrun, I think. Joe came in a minute and a half later, about a minute down on his best at Cannon Hill.

Derek told me he'd stopped his watch at 20:05 and that I was several seconds ahead of him, so I realised I might just have scraped in under 20 minutes for the third time.

When the results came out they confirmed my time as 19:55 - my third best 5k result.

I think I need to look at why I feel so bad early on in races. I might try doing something different with my pre-race preparation. I understand some runners have some sort of 'warm up' routine. Maybe I should try that!