Another week and my Garmin is telling me it’s time for another ParkRun. Last week was a huge leap forward in pace following my calf niggles throughout November and into December. I had set my “goal time” to be an ambitious 2½ minutes quicker than last week. The weather forecast wasn’t great for today with plenty of rain and a bit of wind predicted.

And yes, it was wet, and quite chilly too. 5ºC but it certainly felt colder. I was glad to have my gloves with me along with the first outing of my Under Armour storm kit. The start was delayed by 15 minutes due to two fallen trees blocking parts of the course, but by 0915 we were on our way – all 157 of us.

Once again I had calculated my pace times needed to reach my target finish time and with my Garmin telling me my pace per km and per mile I knew when and where to push. I was hitting my km pace targets almost to the second before one final push on the final kilometer.

3 minutes 10 seconds knocked off my previous PB from last week and I smashed through my goal time as well.

16 minutes 14 seconds quicker than my first ParkRun in October

These GPS heat maps show areas where I have made gains. The 5K distance is two laps.

Due to the weather there were no Chalk Guy scribbles this week.

And that brings ParkRun in 2023 to a close. But, it starts again in just two days time with the first ParkRun of a very important 2024 on New Year’s Day!