My 10k run is only six weeks away now, and A told me that I should try running with a group to practice for the real thing. I heard about parkrun from a few people. It's a volunteer-run timed running event, and there are a bunch of them around Melbourne, and the world, over various distances, depending on where you are. I wasn't quite ready for 10k (the closest is 9.9k in Maribyrnong), so I thought I'd start slow with 5.
The one at Albert Park happens every Saturday at 8am - rain or shine, which is an important distinction in Melbourne (though it sounds like if the weather is truly horrible, the event gets cancelled). Unfortunately, true to Melbourne's volatile weather patterns, we had both rain and shine. I made the stupid mistake of thinking it was sunny and showed up in a T-shirt. My arms were frozen by the time we gathered for the pre-run briefing. The event co-ordinator congratulates everyone for showing up, asks who is on their first run, and who is from interstate / another country. Then the first-timers are told to gather for a quick explanation of how things work.
You pre-register and print out a barcode (it must be printed, and you have to bring your own, as the scanners can't scan phone screens). Everyone starts at the starting line, and you run the course at your own pace. The faster people will split away from the pack, and the slower people will fall behind - there's no pressure, though I imagine you have to finish some time within a 2-hour window???
At the end of the course, you are handed a plastic token with a different barcode, which is linked to your finish time. You head to the volunteers with scanners and they will scan your token and the barcode from your registration to link the time to your profile. The results get uploaded to the parkrun website and you can track your past results. There were people who were wearingg parkrun T-shirts with numbers indicating milestones for numbers of runs they've done, e.g. 20, 100. If, like me, you don't care about your time, you can just hand your token to a volunteer and tell them you don't want your time recorded.
It was quite different running with a large group of people, rather than on my own. 306 people showed up for this run, so it was a huge change to my usual routine! Since it was my first run, I purposely headed to the back of the pack and just picked someone to follow. I ended up outpacing them, and picked another person. That was pretty much my plan for the entire run, until I found someone who was running at a pace I was comfortable with.
I noticed there were some people who would run in bursts, going quite fast, then slowing to a walk, then speeding up again. There was one woman who I kept trading places with. I overtook her while she was walking, and she overtook me while running. MrBrioche said it's better to try and keep a constant pace rather than speeding up and slowing down, so I'll try to focus on that.
I ended up beating my previous personal best by about a minute, so it seems to really help having people around. MrBrioche said it's probably because you feel the pressure to keep pace with someone. It's a weird feeling, because I purposely choose to run early in the morning so I have the running track mostly to myself. The only other crazy people out there at that time of the day run so much faster than I do that there's no hope of keeping up with them!
A checked in with me after my run, and asked how I felt. After thinking about it for a while, the only thing I could think about was that it was nearly 9am, I had just run 5km, and I hadn't even had breakfast yet. The great thing is that A mentioned he was having second thoughts about going on his run (a huge 34km compared to my 5km), but the fact that I had run pushed him to do it, too. Peer pressure, woooooooo!
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