Steve is a bit of a single minded character with a very hands on (or fingers in everyone's pie) style of managing things. At the time even I thought FLP was moulded in his image of what the event should be. The fact that that clashed with what the parkrun organisation wanted it to look like eventually saw the end of Steve’s involvement with parkrun. I have to say though it was Steve who encouraged me to try other events, go on hash runs and look at what local running clubs had to offer. So he had a positive influence on my developing running hobby.
Frimley Lodge parkrun is set in an attractive park alongside the Basingstoke canal with a real mixture of surfaces including grass, gravel and forest trail along the canal towpath, through woodland, grassland and round football pitches. In winter it can get really muddy and becomes a proper winter cross country course. It’s now my home parkrun and I love running here with all the friends that I have made.
The first time I ran the course was in a time of 27:50 and then over the next four weeks had consecutive PBs to take my time down to 25:13. Keeping up a midweek run and cycling to work and parkrun was keeping my improvement going. I had my first sub-25minute run while on holiday in the New Forest with a 24:59 at Eastleigh parkrun’s old course and then returned to FLP to smash my PB there with a decent 24:24. That was a good day and I put a special effort in after getting a great surprise in the pre-run briefing by being nominated as Sweatshop runner of the month for setting 4 PBs in a month while also cycling to the event and volunteering as well. I still run in the free pair of trainers that got me.
I turned to improving my 10k times and entered Mortimer again and the Julian Farrell for the first time. Neither of these are what you would call good PB courses though as they both include huge hills in them. Mortimer was held on a hot day in September and I got round about a minute quicker than last year (53:46) and had the minor achievement of running the whole course with no walking up the big hill.
The Julian Farrell 10k is named after a past president of the Camberley & District Athletics Club and is held in early October. It's run on roads between Camberley and Frimley, starts with a few km on undulating housing estate roads before climbing up the mountainous Portsmouth Road past Frimley Park Hospital. You get to the top at about 6k and then drop on a long downhill for another 2km before that last run round the local houses with the finish in the grounds of King's International College. Felt crap going up the hill going solo with no-one around me that I knew and got round in a time of 54:17. I struggled with that one, but other people I know coped pretty well with the cool wet conditions of the day, in particular Louise Brooks who beat me by a good 45s).
After this I set myself what I thought was an ambitious target of getting under 24 minutes at FLP by Christmas. For a couple of weeks I was nowhere near it, then blasted a 23:50 on a cool day in mid-October. I was elated and kind of concerned at the same time - where to from here? I thought about a sub 23 minutes 5k target, but as it turned out I wouldn't get another PB at Frimley for another 18months. I also thought about stepping up to a half marathon.
I had plateaued and on the back of a 6 or 7k mid-week run, a parkrun and a bit of cycling to work week in week out I wasn't going to be able to just run faster 5k or 10k times on a whim. The only variable was what I did on a Friday or Saturday night as one beer and a late night would put me in a mental trough on race morning with loads of negative thoughts before I had even got to the start line. I took a long time to get out of this situation. I now classed myself as a runner, but what little I was doing was becoming a chore. Something would have to change.
Next time: Big Town Half Marathon and Joining the Club
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