Day 20 A cold, muddy wintery parkrun

Today's run - Parkrun - Trails - 5K - 24.29

This morning I was up bright and early for a Saturday to head off to a parkrun. 

It was a slightly special parkrun as I was excited to be taking part in @brentwoodparkrun inaugural event. Held in Weald Country park it is a 10 minute drive there which this morning meant defrosting the car from the arctic grip that enveloped it over night. 

The early morning run and start was not helped by a night out last night at a family birthday party which involved quite a few celebratory drinks, a whooping big pizza as below and getting a taste for and subsequently rather enjoying more than a few shots of lemoncello.  

South Weald park was the venue for my last marathon the Brentwood Weald Country park marathon which I completed at the end of October.

The park is one of my favorite local parks and its a lovely place to walk and is fast becoming one of my favorite places to run. 

This morning the park was at its best and could have provided plenty Christmas card worthy photo opportunities. 

The run its self was tough, not just because of the icy and muddy conditions but because of the hilly terrain and the technical trails provided by running through the forest and in and around the assortment of trees with their protruding roots and branches.

Overall I felt pretty strong and was happy with my pace, my aim was to try and go around 25 minutes as I felt that would be a decent time on a trail based course knowing it would be hilly and muddy. I finished in 24.29 which I was very pleased with as the course actually ended up being tougher than I envisaged. 

I tried to run at times with the same pacing strategy we used for the 5K track session at Asics 26.2 bootcamp of pushing for 400m, recovering for 200m and repeating throughout. I found this method useful to keep pushing myself and I was pleased I was strong enough mentally and physically to keep pushing. I definitely fell I am strong enough at the moment to put some decent pressure on my 5K PB. 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for tomorrows post on my Santa run!