My 80th parkrun

I ran my 80th parkrun and my 69th at Glasgow today, Saturday 13 August.   I didn’t really plan to race it, given that I’d ran the Bella TT on Thursday and have the Glasgow 800 10k Race pencilled in for Sunday.  However as my training programme had a 4mile steady run scheduled, it didn’t take much for me to change my mind and head along to Pollok Park to run my 16^th Glasgow parkrun of 2011.

I lined up with 307 other runners, including my old adversary Norman Boyle for the pre race announcements.  We were advised that parts of the course were flooded, whilst others were muddy.  No real surprise to me, given the weather that we have been having.  The state of the course suited me, as I didn’t intend to race today but to do a good steady run.  I didn’t even wear a watch, never mind my Garmin.  

The only thing that was likely to change my race plan was if Norman was to catch me.  However this was not the case and I was happy enough with my run.  I increased the pace near the end, with the intention of crossing the line alongside the guy in front of me (Alan Gibson) and taking my time from his watch but it didn’t take me long to catch him so I maintained the quicker pace, catching another runner before crossing the line in 82nd place.

I congratulated the two runners and then William McAllister and Norman, who weren’t far behind.  Norman placed 88^th with a time of 22:39, whilst William, who had used me as a pacer, managed a huge PB to place 87^th with a time of 22:33.

I did my warm down with Jennifer Healy before doing an interview with Local News Glasgow, who were reporting on the Glasgow parkrun as an example of a positive community event, and then heading to the Burrell for post race coffee and conversation.

Full Results