Park Run is a free, weekly, timed running event - our teammate from Tokyo, Carol Cunningham, launched the Singapore version of ParkRun in June.
It is a splendid little event. Arnaud and I run the 6 kilometer distance from his apartment to the Park Run starting line as the warmup part of our workout. We schedule our arrival at 6:55am, only five minutes prior to the 7am starting time, so the warmup will flow directly into the hard session. Only 5 minutes is no problem given the informal nature of the event: no long speeches at the starting line by local dignitaries, and no complex registration process with lines and pins, Park Run cleverly uses these digital bar codes for recording all the participant's time trial results.
It is a splendid little event. Arnaud and I run the 6 kilometer distance from his apartment to the Park Run starting line as the warmup part of our workout. We schedule our arrival at 6:55am, only five minutes prior to the 7am starting time, so the warmup will flow directly into the hard session. Only 5 minutes is no problem given the informal nature of the event: no long speeches at the starting line by local dignitaries, and no complex registration process with lines and pins, Park Run cleverly uses these digital bar codes for recording all the participant's time trial results.
38 runners participate this morning. Carol tells us that ParkRun has relied mostly on word-of-mouth for marketing, and the group is largely composed of expats, with what seems to be a large contingency of Australians.
I had planned to do this as an 80% tempo run effort. But of course as usual the competitive dynamic causes me to run at more like 95% perceived effort. I go out in 4th place in 3:50 per kilometer pace. By the halfway mark I am in second place with a split of about 9:10. The leader (Bradley a 40-year old from Australia), is over 100 meter ahead of me, in sight, but far too fast to catch. I struggle through the return portion of the out-and-back, somehow managing to run faster on the second half and finishing in 18:15.
By 10am that same morning my results were already posted:
I volunteered as the time keeper yesterday. It's a great event and the post run breakfast reminds me of the Mika Run aka Starbbucks we used to do a few years ago!
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