Road To Racing: Day One

On the 15th June 2024 I ran a new personal best in the 5k in a time of seventeen minutes and forty nine seconds. Due to a knee injury in September, two ankle injuries in 2025, and life's ebbs and flows, the only timed 5k I completed this year is a 22-minute Parkrun. This series of blogs will document my return to being injury-free and racing once again.

Day one, my first run in ten days. I was away recently and did a test run to see if my ankle would hold. It did. The green flag to start training had been waved but I have struggled for time with holidays, concerts and graduations.

The plan was around 7km. I had a route I wanted to do and my plan was to jog and maybe pick up the pace towards the end if needed to get back in time for tea. Luckily, I timed it well and no such pace increase was needed.

The run started with a three kilometer or two mile downhill section with fears of being rained on. Perhaps a much bigger fear in the first five minutes however was that I could feel my right hamstring, which I have faced problems with before. As I ran away from the town and into the countryside with '100 Bands' by Dina Ayada playing on repeat, I forgot about the problem within ten minutes. The first stretch was down a nice, gravelly path.

After around fifteen minutes, the downhill stretch comes to an end and so does running in a straight line as I take a right turn. Now for the first hill of the route. The effort level does not change but after seventeen minutes I feel the first sweat trickle down my face. Nothing is easy when you are starting from scratch again. At this point I am running on concrete and pass a few people I say hello or nod my head to, depending on what energy I can muster. I can see where I am heading in front of me. Down a path that splits a golf course in half and is covered by greenery.

As I draw closer I think I can hear people on the trail. My hopes are please don't be drug dealers. Yes I have witnessed things on this path before. As I leave the concrete and pass a barn I realise it was just birds. As the path offers a left turn I glance to see if anyone is in close proximity before I head up the secluded path. Yes, a youngish guy about fifty meters away. I stride onwards with a bit more confidence.

The first half of this path is steps. You know the grind. This is the dark part. Literally. As some of the golf gates loom and I get a chance to look at the course, I am delighted to see golfers playing. I even encountered another runner! I emerge back into the sunlight and onto the gravelly part which is a bit less challenging on the legs. Don't take that the wrong way, I was still anticipating the downhill section so I could relax a little.

Back onto the main road and downhill. Now the sweat is more noticeable. I find an opportunity to cross the road and hope my old mate doesn't spot me as I run past his house. A couple of minutes later and we are turning left into a housing estate and every little incline edges closer to killing me off. Another couple of hundred meters uphill and previously I would have ended my run here and walked home but today the route has been adjusted. The temptation to finish here was high but the chances are I would be late for tea if I walked back.

We reach the summit and onto the final stretch where I do my interval sessions. I find somewhere to discreetly spit out the midges in my mouth and now I feel like a state. Perfect time to see an old school colleague...

We blanked each other. I say hi to an older fellow walking about ten meters behind her though. Now for the final challenge, run past a couple of college friend's houses and look cool. And my exe's house too. Mission accomplished and I return to the corner of my street.

Seven kilometers in forty one minutes. I step into my house and the smell of a beef and chilli pepper pasta bake hits me and the sweat explodes to a new level. I do twenty minutes of rehab for my ankle, freshen up and then have the pasta bake. The pasta was a ten out of ten, the run I would give a seven.