At the end of 2019 I had the idea for #project20202020 - twenty different parkrun courses run in under 20 minutes. A nice bit of parkrun tourism and something to keep my training and over-eating on the right track throughout the year.
It started well with a parkrun double on New Year's Day, 19:46 at Southsea and 19:28 at Lee-on-the-Solent. Then 19:41 at Keswick parkrun in February (plus a non-counting 4.99km repeat of Lee pacing Tim GP to a parkrun PB of 19:46)
Then COVID-19 arrived and no more parkruns :-(
We also have a monthly challenge at work. A segment is created (or chosen) each month by the fastest finisher in the previous month who hasn't already chosen. This also effectively came to a close in March but meant I had a few fast 5ks from that. January was net downhill and had my all time Strava 5k PB of 18:04, and that was after a "sighter" of 18:34
February's challenge was roughly net flat, with a 50 metre climb up Port Lane and Old Kennels Lane, so I'm very pleased to have done 18:52 according to FetchEveryone
March's challenge was 8.2km, net flat with 3 big climbs to enjoy. Fetch found a tasty 19:36 for the last 5km
So that's a total of 7 sub-20 GPS 5k's before COVID (8 really, with the short parkrun). Where does motivation come from now?
First up is the stalwort of Strava segments. I'd found 2 overlapping 4.5km segments. Still in March, I got top for one, 2nd for the other and I averaged 3:57/km so got a 19:47 5k
In April I checked I could still run sub-20 with 19:32 on the Fast Flattish 5k segment, a 19:28 says Fetch
May had no sub-20s. I think I had a case of covid toe, which just meant blisters on the bottom of my feet for no obvious reason. So I did a lot of cycling for a week or two which meant my running fitness decreased. I tried a fitness 5k test and scraped 21:59, boo. But my fitness came back fairly quickly thankfully.
In June parkrun introduced notparkrun, which was a new source of motivation. This lead to me regaining sub-20 pace - 19:52 albeit net downhill on segment J12-J13-B&Q Vanity 5k, getting 2nd spot.
July had one sub-20 run, with 2 crowns within a net downhill 19:16
August had 2, first a 19:01 downhill notparkrun segment Vanity 5k: Otterbourne to Kiln Lane and then a more satisfying genuine net flat 5k in 19:39 on Eastleigh flat 5k loop
September had 2 within 97 hours, 19:53 and 19:59, (but both downhill)
October had none, mostly because I ran the super muddy but fun Clarendon marathon, and then picked up an injury by returning too soon - not fast, but on the Wednesday after the Sunday my foot started hurting. So cycling again for fitness.
But 3 sub-20's in November, woot. First by getting the crown with 19:21 on net downhill segment J12-J13-B&Q Vanity 5k. Then I did the adidas TERREX Kendal Virtual 10km race in 40:23, with a fastest 5km of 19:57, and then I did a downhill sub-20 in 19:26 as part of 6.67km at sub-4/km pace
At this point I found the Fetch Everyone Benchmarks page that shows my 20 best 5kms of the year, and saw that I had done 19 sub-20's already, so just needed one more for a covid-adjusted version of #project20202020.
Gotta finish proud so today I ran a net flat 5k in 19:48
All in all, a nice challenge. Hoping I can do a 2021 version with real parkruns, fingers crossed. You want in?
