End of a busy weeks training

Norwich Eaton Park, 31st March 2012 275 runners, dry and about 9 degrees So much for taking my own advise of resting a good few days prior to attempting a 'Hard'/'PB' standard run, although in my head I had decided that "today, I was just here to enjoy my run and the time didn't matter' (yeah right!!!) the day I learn to do that is the day I become uncompetitive with myself! The build up to this weeks parkrun, found me doing a long run 11.64 miles on Tuesday night (my longest ever run) as a training run for my half marathon in May and a solid hour of five a side football on Thursday night. I woke up this morning with the DOM's from Thursday nights football, which is not a great start, I got to the park nice and early for my usual routine of stretching and light jogging to warm up, I especially needed this today because my legs and hamstrings felt really stiff, so I told myself to take it easy and just enjoy the run, clock up the miles on the iMapMyRun and smile. We did the acknowledgment of the helpers and headed off to the start and I even made sure I started well back to stop me going off like a rocket, when I knew my legs wouldn't survive it, I set my music off, I set my my GPS and prepared for the whistle........... The second that whistle went everything I'd told myself went out of the window, I worked myself up the field, found my stride and started to push forward and decided to see if I could at least get a sub 25 and at 2.5K I was at 12:19 so I thought I'd push harder to see if I could get close to my PB of 24:00, but within 5 mins my legs felt heavy and I had a stitch, but I ran through it and just kept a decent pace, behind a couple of decent looking runners from tri-anglia, knowing I would still try to sprint finish. As I ran up the final straight, I was very close to the two in front and one other runner and I decided to go for it and gain 3 places, which is exactly what I did and sprinted through the finish line to the claps of the watching crowd, I stopped my GPS and was pleased to see a sub 25. I queued up, got scanned and went off for my usual black coffee, unfortunately I had to scrounge one as I dropped my £10 somewhere in the queue, but had a great chat with a fellow parkrunner and his daughter about his Iron Man events, which has got me considering a triathlon. Please remember I am training for 6 events in 2012 for Alzheimer's including a 480K bike ride from Vietnam to Cambodia www.justgiving.com/ian-golden-2012 or text GOLD51 £2 to 70070