I was lucky enough to start the month on holiday in Italy. I’d taken my running shoes with me and ran a parkrun in Rome, which was really fun. We spent four days in Rome and then headed an hour south and spent five days in a small beach town. It wasn’t really an easy place to run because the town was on a steep hill, but I found a stretch of beachfront long enough to get a nice 5k in a few times.
Back home I was excited to get back to proper training, only to bash one of my toes so badly the whole thing went purple. Thankfully the bruising subsided after a few days and it wasn’t broken, but it did mean I had to skip my first track session in more than six years. Tune in next month to see how my next attempt goes.
5k PB attempt
I’ve already said here that my summer focus is on my 5k time and I’ll be using a local 5k race series as well as parkrun to work on that. Last Wednesday evening was the first of the races and I went aiming to put a mark in the sand as to where my 5k fitness is now. My PB from 2016 was 21:21 and the plan for the summer was to improve on that. I wasn’t expecting to do it on my first try… but that’s what happened.
I lined up fairly near the front, got jostled about for the first 100m and then overtook a few people and settled into position for the long out-and-back. I like an out-and-back because you get to see who is ahead and behind you. I gave a shout to all my club buddies I saw going in the opposite direction and it fired me up to dig deep in the last mile.
I finished in 20:51, a new PB at the age of 42 and I feel like I could even go a bit quicker this summer. For further reading on how exactly I’ve improved, despite getting older and running less, I’ll direct you to the three links below.
More from this month
This month I’ve been…
Reading The Marriage Portrait was my holiday read. It was ok.
Watching The Traitors US Series 2 on iPlayer to avoid football.
Drinking smoothies - I bought a new blender and no veg is safe.