A new town. A new parkrun. And I came 4th!!

If you're a parkrunner you already know it's not a race. But how sweet it is to occasionally visit a tiny parkrun and finish so far up the front 😁😊😄

Today, the last day of the year, I ran at my 203rd parkrun, my 133rd different one and my 50th for this year 🎉 I finished in a very unplanned but fun 25:25.

The numbers were tiny compared to what we experience most weeks but were bigger than average for this country-town-parkrun. They get an average of around 22 people walking and/or running each week. Today they had a mighty 33! 😂

It was awesome. The people were chatty and friendly as tends to be the case in Australian country towns. The course was entirely on concrete with several loops and turnarounds, but was easy to navigate. The youngest people there were a handful of kids aged 4-5 years; the eldest, a man in his eighties trying to get to "84 different parkruns before his 84th birthday". 🤯

The weather was mild. The town was pretty. And there were lots of smiles.

No one wanted to stand on the start line so Brad and I moved up and I encouraged others to join us. I was confident that no one was likely to beat Brad but I wasn't even sure if any of them would beat me either! Until we started running that is and while the little boys zoomed ahead having no idea how long 5km is for such little legs, I was surprised when a teenage girl ran ahead so fast I knew there was zero chance I could keep pace with her.

I like this course a lot. With the several out and back sections I got to see Brad and cheer so many people on multiple times. Several of them cheered me on as well, which is one thing I totally love at parkrun; it encourages people to encourage each other.

After running much harder than I had intended for the first 3km, once I could see that I was unlikely to be overtaken and had almost no chance of catching the nine-times-Ironman-finisher or the speedy teenage chick, I shifted down to a more comfortable gear. I felt for a pace where I could still recover while running. I let myself walk the short steep uphills. And I increased my cadence. It felt heaps better and at that pace I probably could have run much further.

At least, that's what I thought I'd done; I thought I'd slowed down. But I just looked up my Garmin Connect stats to confirm. I made the change and increased my cadence soon after 3km. And yes, I had a flat out and back section but still, check out the 4km split!!!

I was recovering but going faster! Gold🥇 Or... whatever colour the medal is for 4th 🤣

Happy. Great morning. Great people. Great town. New parkrun. Ran fast(er than I have been). Made friends during parkrun and afterwards. Awesome 😎

Most photos taken by Brad (new.things). Thank you Garmin Connect and parkrun HQ for the results and stats - shown as screenshots from my phone. The two photos of us in the parkrun square were taken by a fellow parkrunner, Emma, who grabbed Brad's phone and snapped these for us while wrangling her very cute toddler.