A year ago, more or less, I wrote about parkrun, registered, got a barcode, and then prevaricated and didn’t get around to trying to run around the park for 5k.

Last Friday, I went and checked I could indeed run 5k around a park in under 50 mins and wouldn’t be the absolute slowest person there.

(If you’re interested, you can get the GPX for any parkrun on the “course” page of the parkrun website and convert it into a Runkeeper course using these intstructions.)

And this Saturday I got up early to be at the start line long before 9am and ran with the people there.

The email with the results just arrived and they’re here. I came 77th out of 92! Clicking through on my age group result, I see that of all 83 men aged 35-39 who have ever run Forest rec in the last year, only one has ever run it slower.

I’m actually pretty chuffed with the time, I didn’t think I could do anything like that. I also know that to improve, the next step is the easy to say, hard to do, “spend less time walking.”

Now, having got up early on a Saturday, must try extra hard not to waste the rest of the day.