Eastleigh Park Run

Last Friday night Martin and I travelled to Sussex for the Brighton & Hove Park run, where we both ran disappointing times (which we blamed on the two hard races we had done the previous weekends and too much marathon training in between).  We still had a great weekend and enjoyed a fabulous long run on the South Downs on Sunday.  If I didn't live in Dorset, Sussex would be high on my list of alternative places to live.

This Saturday we decided to try the newest and nearest Park run event at Eastleigh, as a final sharpener before the marathon next weekend.  Our race was nearly over before it began as the alarm clock failed to go off at 6.40am - fortunately (or not) I woke up at 4 minutes to 7 and a mad scramble to leave the house by 7am as planned ensued.  This saw me trying to put on compression socks (never an easy task) as Martin hurtled his car down the valley at top speed.  Nothing like a good dose of early morning stress to improve your race prospects.

Despite the chaotic start we arrived in plenty of time at the Lakeside Country Park and began to warm up and attempt to work out where the course went.  Any hopes we had of recording decent times were dashed as we realised that this 5k, unlike B&H, is run on a mixture of cinder tracks and grass with some tight turns, dips and rough ground - all of which has to be negotiated twice in this two lap race.  There is also a steam railway running round the park and this has to be crossed three times - on each lap!

This was only the 21st running of the Eastleigh Park run and numbers were about half of the previous week's total.  Even so we started right at the front in order to avoid bottlenecks on the first narrow section of the route.  As we hurtled past bemused fishermen on the bank of the lake I was only a few places behind Martin but he soon pulled away from me, as we turned sharp right across the first stretch of grass and then another track through trees to the first railway crossing - which involved a nasty tight left then right turn.  The next section was straight and fairly flat but on grass, followed by a short climb onto a grassy bank and the roughest part of the course with an awkward dip and fairly sharp right turn before arriving back at the start and embarking on lap two.

Normally during a 5k I know exactly how well (or not) I'm doing by constant monitoring of the time, but even though there were km markers I didn't check my watch once during the race as I concentrated on where I was putting my feet and not tripping over any of the many hazards.  It felt like I was running quite fast but I can never judge my pace so it was just head down and slog it out to the finish.  I was very pleased therefore to find that on a much slower course I had actually beaten last week's time by 2 seconds and finished in 19.53.  Martin had similarly improved last week's time by 9 seconds and finished in an impressive 6th place overall.  I was 12th overall and first lady.

Although this is not a race you would do for a time it was very enjoyable and in a great setting, aided by the fact that it was a beautiful, bright, autumn morning.  There is always a great atmosphere at Park runs, they're free, they're all over the country and they take place every Saturday morning.  What more could you ask for?

On checking out the results later in the day we discovered that for the second week in a row we were 1st and 2nd overall on age graded results.  I'm not sure that this is necessarily a good thing, it just makes me feel rather old!!!