Have you ever looked at the random stats in the footers on the parkrun website? One stat that stood out for a while for me was the average number of parkruns run per parkrunner at 13.6. I guess this is a bit lower due to the impact of lots of people trying it out and not returning but, after this morning where I ran my personal #14, I’m now above this number – ergo an above average parkrunner!

It’s still a way to go until I’m at one of the official milestones but, considering I’d never run a parkrun 12 months ago, I do now feel very much part of the community. What is strange is that this time last year, I still struggled to see the point of parkrun. Why would I drive 20mins to run just 5k and then drive home again when I could use that time to run at my own leisure?

Then last year one of my friends decided to start her 40th birthday with a visit to Huntingdon so we did the drive and I loved it. However, I was still struggling to justify the drive each way until in June a new one started in my home town of St Neots. What was even better was the start line was just a couple of mins from my front door so there were no excuses.

There are still weeks where family commitments mean I can’t get down but the beauty is I can make a call right up until 8.30 so I can only see my run number rise and rise!

On to today’s run itself and I was all ready to make excuses as I’ve not run all week because of a cold and I headed down just to clear the pipes. However, after the recent weeks of cold and wind, conditions this morning were perfect for a fast time and I couldn’t quite believe it as I crossed the line with a 14s PB. The resistance training of recent parkrun conditions paying off!

Some random stats:

  • 14th parkrun in total
  • 11th parkrun at Pocket
  • Knocked 39 off on Stopwatch Bingo (12/60)

Did anyone else get an unexpected PB? Let me know in comments!

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/pocket

By Mike

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