So the London Marathon is over, I’ve had a month of easy running to recover, and now it’s time to turn my focus towards the second half of the year. This year my summer and autumn training will all be focused towards my next major challenge – the Berlin Marathon on September 29th! With that in mind, I’ve decided to focus my June training on building a nice solid mileage foundation by running at least 5 km every day, and hopefully reach a total of over 100 miles for the month.
The 1st of June fell on a Saturday, so what better way to start off the month than trying out a new parkrun! I work in the town of Stevenage, Hertfordshire during the week, but am never normally around at the weekends, so had been wanting to try out Stevenage parkrun for a while now. I had arranged to meet up with a friend, seasoned parkrun and marathon runner Daniel, who had kindly offered to show me around his home course. Daniel has visited an incredible 100+ different parkrun courses! Why not read all about his parkrun adventures over at his blog: Danik The Explorer
The Stevenage parkrun course is a scenic two laps of Fairlands Valley park. I often complete a lap of the large southernmost sailing lake as part of my work lunchtime running route, but the course today also took me through a lovely little woodland trail and up around the smaller wildlife-filled northern lakes which I had never seen before.
It was a beautiful bright sunny morning which brought out a bumper crop of 384 parkrunners, a great turnout for Stevenage. Daniel, being a considerably speedier runner than me, was able to sprint ahead a few times and get some great photos! The two laps flew by, however as we came up to the end of the second lap I saw that the finish line was off to the side up a steep grassy hill, making my sprint finish rather challenging! In the end , I finished in a time of 28:45, a decent time for me on this type of partly cross-country route, and my fastest 5 km since the marathon.
I’m looking forward to continuing my June run streak with at least a 5 km run every day, and will be trying to fit in all manner of early, late, group and solo runs, parkruns and races!
Monday Running 