A smashing run

Last Saturday I said that I reckoned I could knock thirty seconds off my PB if I really pushed. Well, today I wasn't consciously pushing and yet, as I passed the roundabout on the way to Oakwood, I was sub 6 minutes. I decided I'd try to keep the momentum going up the long hill but my legs felt drained and I realised that this wasn't going to be a great time - still under 30 minutes would be acceptable (if slightly disappointing given my start).

I turned at Oakwood and checked my watch. Sub 14!?! "OK", I said to myself, "Let's not get silly - just keep up a good pace, but for God's sake, don't injure yourself". So I kept the pace up, going downhill at the limit of what I thought I could do without knocking all the wind out of me, and then trying to push a little up the small hills. The last one was relatively painful, but I kept going most of the way.

I clocked up 26 minutes and 24 seconds - 50 seconds knocked off my personal best! It just didn't seem possible to go that fast without serious training - and at this kind of pace, ten second changes in speed are massive. If you assume a world record of 16.5 minutes, that equates to bringing down my time by almost 10% [where the WR is counted as 0].

It was my second fastest run of all time. I wish the Town Park run [which I did my all time best on] was still an option - I'd love to prove to myself that I'm way faster than a year ago. A week ago my best Oakwood run was 28m17s, set back in 2004 - in the last ten days I've beaten that on four occasions and knocked almost two minutes off the time. Now if only my knee would let me run further...