31-05-25
Parkrun 5k -- 20:06 [3:53, 3:58, 4:07, 4:10, 3:55] according to watch, 20:03 according to Parkrun officially.
Ran to and from the race as well (4.5, about 28 mins each), so 14k total and ~75 mins running, not bad. Will still do an easy 80 mins tomorrow probably.
Notes
Felt good. Tried my hardest not to go out too hard, and knew I was aiming for 20 or so given training and such, and felt good on the day. So hard to find that pace when you don't train it. Was 5 laps of a small park and 600+ people, so I think Ks 3+4 being slow is also partly explained by being bad at dealing with weaving through a big crowd.
Quite a funny course, you run up a like 5% grade hill for 500m, then gain back all that altitue with a 250m downhill, then flat for 250m, then repeat 5x. Makes pacing weird. (GAP/Coros effort pace both give me "3:57 pace" fwiw)
Anyway, was super fun, and really nice to do it with buddies. Turns out I over-estimated the fitness of the others so I actually was the first finisher.
Not used to racing so I think effort wise I definitely left something on the table. That'll come with practice. Everyone had fun and the others do Parkruns pretty regularly, so hopefully I'll improve the mental game with more reps with the boys.
Vindication that my training paces are on point, though, had worried the reason I was feeling cooked this week was that I'd been using too fast paces.
Max HR was 190 (from chest strap), seems plausible given it was ~195 7 years ago. Will adjust some stuff based on that (more w/r/t expectations, don't really use it for pacing).
Eta: same training pace calculator says my easy pace shd be 5:55 to 6:15...lol I just never have it in me to do that in the morning. Plus adjustment for zoom fly 6 vs easy shoe
