parkrun 49 & some new shoes

Mr 49th parkrun was meant to include some tourism. My original plan was to take on Walthamshow with my brother, do a lap of IKEA & then play cricket in the afternoon. Once our cricket game was cancelled & John took a flight to Spain at short notice the idea of Walthamshow & IKEA wasn't one that appealed at all to Mrs H.

So I suggested Southend. Just an hour's drive, we could run, then head to the seafront & spending a small fortune in the amusements. Though this plan had merit, Mrs H felt that the first truly sunny day of the summer would mean Southend being horrifically busy, even if we got there early.

Ultimately our options narrowed due to us staying in bed & being indecisive. Soon we were down to one option or no parkrun & a rehashing to plans to complete my 50th in a couple of weeks.

With minimal time to prepare we headed out the house to the Chelmsford parkrun event. My brother in law appears to have caught the parkrun bug & was already making his own way there following his debut a fortnight previously. There was a change to the course this week, a funfair had taken over the central park so extra loops were added elsewhere to accommodate. The event team at Chelmsford need to be applauded for the resourcefulness & ingenuity at keeping the run going no matter what is thrown at them.

The Run

At the start I lined up alongside a guy who'd I'd almost tripped & also paced 24:00 a fortnight ago, said hello & asked him if he fancied running together again to another good time. Unfortunately the narrow & slow start prevented us from really hooking into a decent pace & once I was through a slow 5:07 first kilometre I started to stride out in an attempt to rescue my time.

Subsequent splits of 4:42, 4:56 & 4:53 had put me back on track for a potential tilt at my PB. My watch had appeared to be measuring the course to be long initially so I was hoping this would play out to my advantage. Once I'd got over the frustrating first kilometre I felt great, pushing myself along despite only running on the Wednesday since returning from Helsinki.

A frustrating start

With the final kilometre approaching a PB was possible, yet despite pacing at 4:42 my time when I crossed the line was 24:16. I suspect I started my watch a bit too early on this occasion as my official time was 24:06. Only ten seconds over my best at Chelmsford & it continues my run of sub 25:00 parkruns to 8 in total. I'm not sure how accurate the time is though as a runner went through the funnels without taking a token, seems a bit silly to run that far & not get the parkrun basics right!

Post Run

I foolishly wandered to Run Active after getting changed and noticed that they had a buy one pair, get a second half price offer on their running shoes. I bit the bullet & went in. I had been eyeing the end of my training schedule in May as the perfect time to convert to another running shoe.

I was set up for some gait analysis & mentioned to the staff member looking after me that though it'll look like I over pronate, I suffer from a bit of hip rotation that gives that impression. After watching me run for a minute (sweating profusely post parkrun) it was confirmed that my legs are nice and straight on impact but the way my left foot swings out makes it look like overpronation at full speed. This meant that I didn't need stability shoes! After years of wearing clunky adidas supernova sequence revisions or the running equivalent of stabilisers it was nice to make the move away.

I liked the look of the Mizuno Wave range but they didn't stock my size so I tried out some Saucony Knivara 5's, Asics Cumulus 15, Adidas Boost & a couple of other models. Running straight after a parkrun wasn't the wisest as my feet were still tender so I went through all of the pairs & then opted for the Saucony & Asics pairs.

New Shoes!

I'm looking forward to testing them out, after my week trial of the overly barefoot Brooks Cadence Pures in February it will be nice to see how my legs react.

The Conclusion

One more run to complete 50 parkruns. On May 31st we'll be returning to Greenwich parkrun, where it all began.