I was a little nervous about this one.
It was a PB attempt and I hadn’t attempted an overall PB in some time (my overall PB as it stood was three months old and also set at Blyth). It was meant to be a PB attempt for both me and Geth, but he’s been injured the last couple of weeks and so he just did a walk for one lap.
I wanted a sub-24, my existing PB being 24:05. It was pacer week, but I didn’t make a decision in advance about whether to use the 24 pacer, as parkrun pacers don’t always pace steadily. However, the pacer on the day was doing a really good job, so I decided to sit on his heels for a while and see how it went.
The conditions were great (it had been really windy last time we were there, which is always a risk with coastal parkruns) and I actually found the pace really comfortable. I was tempted to step it up a gear to see how fast I could go, but decided to play it safe and stick with the pacer.
This meant that I had a really steady and comfortable run and plenty of energy for a sprint finish at the end. I finished in 23:43, feeling like I could do it even faster in the future. A really positive run!
A bit of pre-race volunteering this next week, and then some exploration later in July.