Home parkrun PB

I recently ran my first PB at my home parkrun since 2017! My PB was 22:23 and, even though I’ve come close a few times, I’ve never been able to beat it.

I’ve run sub-22 a few times at other courses – Severn Bridge, Marine Parade and Berkeley Green. These courses are all flat or nearly flat, on tarmac and not crowded.

Our home course is not a PB course. We always have more than 500 runners, often more than 600, so it is crowded. We have a winter course and a summer course. The winter course is too muddy for PBs, the summer course is too hilly for PBs. So I’ve always accepted that I just run slower there. If I run 23:30 at my home parkrun, I’m pretty happy with that. Any quicker than that and I’ve very happy.

The other thing about my home parkrun is that I do quite a lot of volunteering, including pacing once a month. Obviously I don’t do pacing at a pace I would struggle to maintain myself. So I pace 25 minutes. And if I have a race the next day, which I often do, I do a slow parkrun. If the race is a half marathon or marathon, I walk. I always do these slow ones at my home parkrun. There’s no point in travelling somewhere else just to go slowly!

So for many reasons, I just hadn’t been able to beat that PB.

But then one Friday evening – the week after I’d run my fastest time of the year so far at Berkeley (21:24) – my husband said there was no reason why I couldn’t beat my home PB. And I knew he was right. And I knew I was going to do it. Those words were literally all I needed. Although I decided to stay quiet about my intentions, just in case I failed.

I’d planned to start near the front of the pack, but I didn’t manage to get as far forward as I wanted to. So three or four seconds elapsed before I even reached the start line and was able to start running. Because that’s just what happens at a parkrun with 600+ runners!

At Berkeley, I’d gone below 7 minute/ miles for every mile. I was pushing myself hard, but I couldn’t go that quickly. It’s just too crowded! But the mud had dried a lot, so at least it wasn’t slippy.

I unexpectedly overtook a friend from the club (the one who paced me to my 10k PB without exactly knowing he was pacing me!). On the last lap (of a three and a bit lap course), he overtook me. He must have known I was going for it, without me even telling him.

“Stay with me, Sarah!”

That was all the encouragement I needed. I did stay with him. More or less. Just knowing he was there, dragging me along, helped me maintain my pace and keep pushing on the last lap, even though I would have probably dipped a bit.

I crossed the line in 22:05, seventh female and first in my age category, with an age grading of 76.83%. I’d smashed my home parkrun PB! Could I do it again next week? If the conditions were right, I thought I just might manage it again… (I did! I got 21:58, third female and an age grading of 77.24%.)