Parkrun - 22:18, weight the same at 77.2kg

No surprises here. Same old weight. Good first km at Parkrun, 4:03, but faded badly to 4:41 in the fourth km. Need to get the weight down and get up earlier on the Sat morning (was up at 7am which is pushing it).

New PB at Parkrun - 22:13

Managed 22:13 at this weeks parkrun, weight no change from last week, 77.2kg. It was really warm too, in the high 20s at 8am. Poor week of training. I've managed to improve each week over the last month of Parkruns which is pretty pleasing. Just need to slowly improve my training and sort my diet out.

Missed Parkrun - damn!

But never mind, I went out for a "speed session" hehe, I kind of make it up as I go along. 3km warm up then I ran 1km in 4:15, followed by a walking recuperation for a good few minutes, 'cos that did take it out of me. Then another 500m-600m at 4:15 pace. Before heading home. Running the 4:15 showed me there was no way I could maintain that pace over 5km, although that is a goal I must aim for.

My weight on Sat morning (20/2/16) before breakfast was 77.2kg. This is a drop of 5.5kg (12lbs) since April last year. Goal is 72kg. Don't think I've been that light for 20 years!

2016 Goal - Sub 20 min 5k!

Time to get serious! At my local 5k Parkrun I can do it in around 22:30. That's 4:30/km pace. To achieve sub 20 I need to get to a fraction under 4:00/km pace. It's gonna be tough, no doubt about it. My current pace already kills me, so I'm going to need to get in some serious training.

First goal this weekend will be to see if I can hit 4:25 pace, which would give me a race time of about 22:05. That would be a big PB for me. I will use my old Garmin 405 which has a Virtual Partner function - you set the pace you want to achieve and it tells you how far ahead/behind you are.

As well as training I need to lose some weight. I'm currently 78kg, which is down from 82kg last year. That's still too heavy though. According to Runners World if I lose 5lbs my 5k time could improve by 30 secs. Lots of assumptions in that article though. I would like to achieve 75kg which is a 6.6lb loss.

I'll try and do the same Parkrun most weeks to gauge my progress. I'll also post my weight to see if there is any correlation.

By the way I am 48 this year...yikes!