Parkrun newbies and trying a sub 30 - keeping each other motivated! 🏃‍♀️ 🎉

I went to my track session last night. First time in a few weeks. It was a bit hot but I was quite pleased with my interval paces. Running with someone on Saturday so no pb attempt for me this week. Good luck for Saturday. Well done for getting out there yesterday.

Hello - can I join you? Not a newbie but have only one sub thirty parkrun (out of 211) which was 18 months ago now. Would love another one but will need to do more training and lose some weight to make it happen.

I got my pb after training hard for a 10k so longer runs and intervals seemed to be the key for me. I cried when I hit my sub 30 and then I kept crying throughout that day. It was 7 years after my C25K.

Well done everyone!

Well done everyone!

I did 29:28 today which I’m happy with as it was very warm. Lovely day to be out there!

Well done all who ran this morning. I marshalled today as they were short. I enjoy annoying the runners with my bell and cheering everyone on.

I did my first ever park run this morning… 39.17 and I was proud of that and went along on my own so feel like I’ve done well all round this morning! I have just started running 3x a week and have never done a run with others but really enjoyed this morning!! Also impressed with the app, like seeing all the stats!

I was too late for a sub-30 - lateness is my parkrun downfall!

I’m consoling myself with having had a good run (very pleasant through trees) & with feeling a bit fitter than earlier in the year.

I am 70 and aiming for sub 40.

I saved Dulwich to try to break my target as it's flat and fast, then the pandemic came and I got fat. Oh well.

@Lemontreeinthecity im marshalling my local parkrun tomorrow as saving my legs for cheddar gorge challenge marathon on Sunday! I always enjoy marshalling and it means I don’t get tempted to just run it anyway when I have a long race on the Sunday.

as for music at parkrun it actually depends. Sometimes I have music, sometimes I don’t, just depends how I feel on the day. I don’t even know whether to bring music on Sunday. I always would for a road marathon but wouldn’t usually for a trail race. However I’m doing it on my own and it’ll be a long old time, so maybe I will. We shall see 😂.

5k is the most brutal distance for newer runners I think

I certainly agree with that, @hugasaurus . It's short enough that you really feel that you should just push on as fast as you can for the whole run. When I was younger I did a few half marathons. They felt much more relaxed. It was easier to feel that most of the challenge was simply completing the run in a reasonably respectable time, almost regardless of PBs.
Also, the notion of a PB is pretty meaningless when you are running on a range of different half-marathon courses. With Parkrun, you get the chance to run the same short course repeatedly every week, so the PB becomes more meaningful -- and therefore more tyrannnical.

And remember that people have so many motivations for doing PR. Sat is a short easy run day for me so I will sometimes do it at PR, without any aim of PBing, just for a change of scenery. No one can PB week after week in a distance outside of a very novice runner making those newbie gains, the vast majority of PRs a person does will be above their PB. I got sub-30 a while ago and haven’t tried another 5k time trial since as I find them fucking awful to run!

5k is the most brutal distance for newer runners I think, both in terms of getting there in the first place and in trying to get a PB. I found 10k pretty easy after 5k, I just had to slow myself down, but if you can run a 5k then you can almost certainly run a 10 at a slower pace if you just want to complete the distance.

If it’s any reassurance I found building up from 5km to 10km loads easier than going from 0 to 5km!! If you can run for half an hour, then running for 35 mins proportionally isn’t that much more. Then when you can comfortably do 35 mins, then 40 mins isn’t too big a leap etc etc….

Before you know it you’ll be at 10km. Good luck!

Sadly I can't do Parkrun on Saturday, but I will be looking to see how you all get on. Good luck!

@MyThreeWordsLook out for a local course with pacer runners as that can really help. I’ve found that as well as hills, how busy the course is & whether it’s muddy / sandy can also affect my time.

Very pleased to have found the thread for help with running motivation!

That's a really good idea, @Whataninterestinglookingpotato . I hadn't thought of it because the course I ran on is literally just a quarter mile from my house, so I have been thinking of it as the only one I would ever choose. But finding another one, esp a hilly one, would be liberating.

As well as sub-30, I was first in my age/sex group and did really well on that special percentage score thingy that Parkrun also provides. It was really rewarding in the short term to get those results, but now it is a shackle.

(I am the same with weight: when I weigh myself and get a good number, it just sets a trap that demoralises me next time I step on the scales. I torture myself with data!!)

@MyThreeWords do you have another course near you? If so maybe the change would get you back into it.

i have about 4 places I can go with in a 30 min drive. A couple are good for faster times but my most local one isn’t a fast course. If you have one that is a generally slower route that might be worth a go. You won’t feel as much pressure to go as quick as you can.

Great idea for a thread! I did my first Parkrun a couple of months ago and accidentally sabotaged my future enjoyment of it by running so, so much at the upper limits of my ability.
I achieved my sub-30 ambition by 12 seconds! But I literally felt sick for the last km (I even felt like I would have a diarrhoea attack ) . And I KNOW that without the novelty of the first-time run I won't be able to match that speed again, unless I do some training that starts to put sub-30 into my comfort zone.
The result is that I haven't been back to Parkrun.
It is meant to be a gentle, self-compassionate, social experience and i have poisoned it. I need to find a way of approaching it in a better way, still with the sub-30 ambition, but building towards that more sensibly.