Park Run number 12 at Lanhydrock house Bodmin. Shaving 7 minutes of my time in 3 months.

Last week it was time for my twelfth Park Run at Lanhydrock House in Bodmin and I wasn't really feeling it. I had been out the night before only for a quiet one with a few pints but I was knackered and had had a terrible nights sleep and was wide awake watching the minutes tick over from 5.00am.

I eventually got out of bed at 6.30am and had my breakfast and thought to myself I might as well do Park Run as I was awake early but I felt shattered. Arriving at Lanhydrock house in Bodmin I was feeling wiped out, sleepy and yawning my head off. I warmed up by jogging to the start line and that hurt! My knees ached and I really did feel like I couldn't even achieve getting around the whole course today.

Meeting up with some friends on the start line we were chatting away and through yawning my head off my eyes were streaming with water and all off a sudden everyone started running. I was half asleep and hadn't even heard them shout go! I started running and thought to myself how hard it felt today, the first bit of the run is a quick down hill before a slight up hill and that first little section of uphill really did feel like a battle!

I wanted to get this finished, as I know the course I slowed down my pace on the flat section along the river in the hope of saving some energy for the long uphill slog. I am still yet to run the whole course and this weeks attempt was no exception. As I hit the steep muddy section through the woods, on the last of the uphill sections before the finish I could barely catch my breath and had to slow down to a walk. As I reached the gate I knew I only had a slight incline uphill to go before a dash downhill to the finish. Forcing myself to pick the pace back up I continued running very slowly up the hill to the brow of the hill and gave it everything to get to the end.

I crossed the finish line absolutely exhausted and got myself scanned in to receive my time and started walking back up the hill to the car park. At least after my run I was feeling slightly more awake now but definitely more exhausted.

Then to my surprise the results came through and I received my notification of my time and to my absolute astonishment and shock I had achieved a new PB!!! Yes a new personal best, clearly lack of sleep and cider has had a positive effect on my running. My quickest time up until now had been 29:11 and this was 4 weeks ago and I was proud of this time, I was sub 30minutes on a hard 5km course and that, I was happy with. After all I have only been running for 3 months now. Last week I had felt stronger, faster and a lot more confident yet I was 6 seconds off beating that time. This week I felt rubbish and smashed through knocking 28 seconds off my time and this week received a time of 28:43.

I'm so pleased that in just 12 Park Run attempts I have gone from achieving a time of 35:48 on my first attempt to now receiving a time of 28:43 shaving a whole 7 minutes of my 5km time since I began.

Massive thank you's go out to Park Run for turning my fitness around in just 3 months and to all the volunteers at Lanhydrock Park run who put on the event. See you all on Saturday for the next one.