It was time for another OH road trip, this time to Cassiobury parkrun in Watford for a club mates’ 25th parkrun (hooray for official milestones) and another one completing Queen of Herts (all the parkruns in Herts).
Cassiobury is a super flat and popular course, with several hundred runners going there each week. In the week leading up to it we had had a lot of rain, and so this was an even better option as apart from a tiny bit at the start, it’s all on tarmac paths so no chance of mud.
We were there nice and early, parking at the bottom of the park (close to Daisy’s in the Park- the lovely cafe that I’d been to when celebrating Dad’s 50th event) and then walking up through the field (getting wet feet from the long grass). We met up with the rest of our group and of course had some photos taken by the sign, and listened to the new runners welcome. Even though I’d been there before, I hadn’t been for a while and it’s always good for a refresher. I remembered two and a bit laps, but it was two and three quarters and handy to have a reminder of how many times to pass the finish funnel before heading in.
Beautiful tree carvings at the start, the purple pop up photo, time on my watch (which I didn’t quite believe) and the finish token.
There were 440 runners there that day, but it didn’t really feel busy after the first few hundred metres. Sometimes on these trips we run together, but this time we were all on our own so I decided to push hard and see if I could get sub 29, as I’ve only managed that once this year. I glanced at my watch a couple of times to see I was doing 9-something minute miles, but as I had not worked out a time or pacing I didn’t have much of an idea what to aim for, so just ran on feel. As I got close to the finish I tried to pick up more pace but was surprised by how close the finish funnel was to the edge of the route- I thought I’d have a bit further to go somehow. I was really chuffed to reach the finish line with a sub 28 parkrun!
After finishing and scanning I headed back to the end by the finish funnel to cheer on everyone else, and do some stretches. Once done we were heading back to Shelley’s as she was hosting a little celebration with amazing (and vegan) carrot cake, and a little look at some Tropic goodies. It was such a good start to the weekend, just chatting about parkruns and running.
Delicious vegan carrot cake, tea, parkrun magazine and the 5K app telling me how close I was to a course pb!
When my result came through I was so pleased to have run my fastest time of the year, but a teeny bit frustrated that I was 4 seconds off a course pb! Ah well, I am not sure I could have run much faster had I had known.
