4 PBs, 1 great Parkrun - a proud Dad and a proud son.

Today has been a gentle day for me, exercise-wise, and despite being seriously tempted to go for a bike ride when the sun came out late in the morning, I've stuck to my promise to have a relatively relaxed day. 


I played a bit of football in the garden with Kieran and Mo this afternoon, but other than that, the only exercise I've done, has been the usual #Pressupathon, #Situpathon,  #Plankaday and of course, Parkrun. 


And what a Parkrun it was! 


Despite a slightly disappointing turnout from my usual running pals, there were still 6 of us in our group this morning. Running today were James (#1 son: 14), Kieran (#2 son: 12), Andy Next Door, Mum, Dad and I. 


The weather this morning was pretty nasty, not too cold (around 8C) but very windy and varying between light and at times fairly heavy rain, which made the record overall turnout at the run (155 people, up from previous 140 record), even more surprising. 

The weather also meant that the ground underfoot was very muddy in places, and more slippery than any other time we've run at Colwick, all of which meant that as we lined up at the start line, I feared my goal to pace Andy and the boys to new PBs was going to be more difficult than I thought, if not impossible. 


In fact, within seconds of setting off, the idea of pacing Andy at all had gone out of the window, as he shot off, almost keeping pace with the very fastest runners, and I had to tell the boys to stay with me at our planned pace, as they were in danger of going off too fast too. 


For the first mile we stuck pretty close together, with James right behind me and Kieran a little further back. I tried to pick the best path through the mud, puddles and other runners, and James was close enough to benefit from me leading the way, whereas Kieran was getting slowed up by some very slippery patches and blocked by big adults (Kieran is very small for his age). 


As we reached 1 mile, we were bang on the planned pace (8 mins 6 secs), and I looked back to see Kieran falling quite a way behind. At this point I had a choice, slow up and try to help Kieran to speed up, or keep at the planned pace, knowing that he'd probably slip further behind. As Kieran was wearing his Garmin (so knew the pace) and was tired after winning his school Cross Country race yesterday, I decided not to slow for him, and to concentrate on trying to get James a new PB. 


As Kieran gradually slipped further behind during the second mile, James and I started to close the gap to Andy, who'd run the first mile in close to 7:30, and was really feeling that early pace. James and I reached half way in 12:10, well on course to beat James's previous best of 24:57, and Andy (who was still 40 metres or so ahead of us), was clearly going to smash his 25:20 PB. 


As we started the third mile, the wind grew in strength and became a full on headwind, so I made sure that James was right behind me and ran with my arms out for a bit to try to shield him from the wind. As we went past the Adventure Centre (where the race starts) for the 2nd time, James was still right in my footsteps, and not long thereafter we caught Andy. As we passed him, I suggested that he get in my slipstream too and try to stay with us. He managed to for a short distance, but soon after I looked back and while James was still right with me, Andy was dropping back quite quickly. When we turned for home with a quarter of a mile to go, I looked at my watch and realised that James was absolutely guaranteed a massive PB, he just had to make it to the finish! I didn't slow the pace though, and instead encouraged him to speed up and up, as I knew he was running better than ever before (and was going to set a time he'd probably struggle to beat for a while). 


With 100M to go we caught and passed a girl who'd been ahead of us for quite a while and I said to James "if you sprint with me to the line, I won't race you", he just about managed to reply "I can't go any faster", but he did and when we reached 5 metres from the line, I slowed to let him get ahead and get the position. 


When I stopped my watch (unfortunately in my excitement, I forgot to stop my phone, so my RunKeeper log was wrong), I was amazed - we'd finished in just over 24 minutes - nearly a minute faster than James had ever run 5K before! Andy wasn't far behind, and had definitely set a massive PB too. About a minute later, Kieran came in as well, a bit dejected that he hadn't beaten his previous best - I've promised him that I'll pace him next week so he can give it his best shot. 


We had to rush off to get the boys to Music School, so weren't able to wait for Mum and Dad to finish, but when I popped to see them a bit later, they were both pretty confident they'd also achieved new PBs too. And so it proved, when the official results came in, from the 6 of us who ran this morning, there were 4 PBs, and they weren't slight improvements, they were massive new bests! I'm so proud of them all, especially given that the conditions were nowhere near ideal!


Here's how the new record setters did:

	New Time	Previous Best	Improvement
James	24:07	24:57	50s
Andy	24:33	25:20	47s
Mum	41:31	43:22	1m 51s
Dad	46:42	47:46	1m 4s

I definitely enjoyed helping James to his new best as much, if not more than setting my own, and really hope I can help Kieran to one next week too. 

This evening I did the usual #Plankaday challenge (do a plank for as long as you can) - after yesterday's record (4:32), I wasn't planning to do anything close to that long, but the boys (and their friends from across the road) were cheering me on, and I somehow managed another new PB: 4:42!

Tomorrow I'm off to Lincolnshire to run with Sarah and who knows, maybe we'll set more new records for her: whether we do or not, I know it will be loads of fun. 

I've spent a lot of the day feeling even luckier than usual - I'm not sure many people can have had their son and both their parents all set their 5K PBs at their favourite running event! :)

Happily,

Mike

PS. Nearly forgot the usual summary. 

Running: 132.69 miles

Walking: 14.26 miles

Cycling: 84.12 miles

Swimming: 0 miles

Total: 231.07 miles

Running streak: 60 days (started 23/11/2011)