Yesterday I ran the Norwich Park Run in Eaton Park.
Park Run is an organisation that was set up in 2004, and organises free, weekly, 5k timed runs around the world from Australia and New Zealand, to Iceland, Poland and South Africa! The UK has many, and even if there isn’t one near you, they are open to people setting up new events all the time. The idea is a great one to get people involved in running in the community, with the ease of taking part whenever it suits you.
You just need to register initially and make sure you take your own personal barcode along to the event so they can record your time, and that’s it! Just turn up to whichever event, on whichever Saturday you would like 🙂
There are 3 Park Runs within a suitable distance of me- Norwich, Fritton Lake and Gorleston Cliffs, and I may give them all a try in the future!
 |
| Source |
Yesterday I went along to the Park Run in Eaton Park- the course is 3 laps of the park, which in itself isn’t great as you don’t get much variation in scenery and I imagine it’s hugely tempting to just bale after 1 or 2 laps if you’re struggling. (Fritton Lake is only 1 lap and Gorleston is 2.) Also because there were some seriously speedy runners yesterday I got lapped by a lot of them, which was a bit demotivating! The surface is mostly paths, with a bit of grass running- the course yesterday was very wet and muddy so there was lots of splashing through puddles which was quite fun 🙂
There wasn’t as much atmosphere as I was hoping- I was expecting a bit more of a social aspect, people running it for fun, maybe having a chat as they went round, but everyone was seriously competitive! It was hard not to get caught up in the rush and end up going off to fast, which is what happened so I had to take several walking breaks towards the end. I really thought that it was going to be a super slow time, it certainly felt much slower and much less fun than the Race for Life! (But I guess you can’t run with glowsticks all the time, haha) Maybe it was the cold, grey morning as some of the photos in the above slideshow seem to suggest more fun times!
I used my phone and the app Runtastic to try and keep track of my pace, and had one headphone in to notify me of how I was doing so I could aim for a decent time. But the GPS lock was terrible and the stats were totally inaccurate so after a while I took the headphones off and just ran at whatever pace I could manage, hence why I thought I was going really slowly!
I felt quite down during the run, and just pushed through it to finish. It was a great feeling to complete it though. It’s still a great sense of accomplishment to be able to run 5k!
I didn’t have high hopes for my results and had to wait several hours to find out my actual time. They do text and email it to you though which is pretty good, as well as posting the results on their website.
My official first Park Run time was 34:21. A big surprise I have to say! Just goes to show that sometimes how you feel has no bearing on how you actually did!
I’m glad I finally did the Park Run- it’s been on my to-do list for ages, since I started running in April so it’s great to tick it off. And I think I will definitely keep going, perhaps once a month to keep track of my progress and maybe try out some different courses.
But I think I will approach it with a different attitude next time- I will just plug into my music on my iPod and not try to stick to any particular pace, and ignore the speedy runners overtaking me (!) and just run it for fun 🙂 For me.
Beki x
