8562/21481
First Park Run for five or six weeks and last time I did it, I quit at 3km and throughout March my times were around 34 minutes. I'd run 1km on Wednesday and then had to walk home, so I wasn't particularly confident about finishing this morning, especially as it was already pretty hot and the sun was beating down on us. Stop beating sun. Be more gentle. We're already in awe of you. You don't have to be so needy.
Probably upset that fewer people worship it these days. You'll have your revenge.
There were pacemakers today, which was annoying as I wasn't trying to beat any records (unlikely to ever get down to the sub 25 minutes I did 5 and a half years ago to be fair), but at least it would give me some idea of how I was doing. I found myself behind the 30 minute pace maker. For about half a kilometre. But I wasn't being overtaken by the 32 minute pacemaker. Which surprised me.
As I got to the 4 km mark I felt my legs get heavy. I knew I'd be able to run one more kilometre, but it felt like it would be tough and slow. Although I was wearing my headphones I heard someone talking to me to my right. I turned and it was the 32 minute pacemaker. "Stick with me and you can get round in 32 minutes," she said. I don't know if she could see that I was struggling or if she did this to everyone. "I've left a 25 second cushion so you can walk up the hill at the end." The course ends on quite a brutal incline. I never walk up it though. I wondered if I must look like a flailing old man who couldn't possibly manage the last five minutes of this run.
Yet her intervention did the trick. I forgot all about my legs feeling heavy and pushed along with the only 32 minuters. I confess I had had hopes of doing it in under 31 once I'd seen my time at 4km. Maybe I could still do it, if I didn't walk up the hill. I found myself pulling away and did NOT walk up the hill and finished in a very surprising 30 minutes and 56 seconds.
Given I had doubted that I would finish I was very pleased with this. Six minutes off my personal best and 90 seconds over the best that I've done this year, but maybe I can get back to sub-30 minute Park Runs again.
It was mainly thanks to that pacemaker and her blend of encouragement and underestimation of me. So I am very thankful to her for that. It felt very good to have done this today.
Sometimes the Universe sends you a little help or reassurance, like the time I was standing on Edinburgh's North Bridge, feeling depressed about my Fringe and my career and not-very-seriously wondering about throwing myself off and Daniel Kitson emerged from the fog and when I said I was thinking of packing it all in, said "Or you could just carry on." Or something like that.
Or when I was in Montreal and had done a horrible gig full of hack comics at a comedy club across the city and then walked back to my hotel and thought maybe it was time to pack in and then Billy Connolly got in the lift that took you the one floor from the street to the hotel lobby and started riffing on what a stupid lift it was and was funnier in 30 seconds than anyone I saw in the whole festival.
If there are angels, then surely this is most of their job. Just coming down to a beaten down mass of humanity and encouraging them very lightly not to give in.
Maybe I am one of those angels. Maybe you're reading this thinking it would be easier just to stop doing the slightly annoying, but possibly ultimately rewarding thing you're doing and I am here to say, "Yeah, or you could just push onwards and see what happens."
It's not like my angels got me anywhere particularly special, but they got me out of self-indulgent holes. Even if Daniel Kitson isn't an angel (which seems unlikely now I think about it), he's still capable of inadvertently giving hope to someone, just as we all are. And just as we all should be doing.
So go on, pick up your feet. You can walk up the hill at the end if you want. Though I know what you're like and that me saying that will just make you swing your arms and get up there faster.
There's nothing much at the top of the hill. Just a slight sense of your own worth.
