How to PB (twice in one week)

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that James and I ran a modified loop course from the Arataki Visitors Centre in Titirangi, you know the one with the tidal wave sized hill right smack dab in the middle of it ..

6.5 km loop

Anyhoo we ran the loop on Saturday morning and as it was the first time we had ever run that particular loop it was (quite obviously) a personal best. #boom

It wasn’t a particularly fast time but considering the number and size of the ascents it was ok (especially for moi).   James was especially proud of me because I’d run quite a lot of it because he knows just how much I hate hills.  I have to admit that was mostly due to the fact James kept setting small achievable challenges for me on all of the ascents – such as “let’s run to that tree with the weird brown thing at the bottom of it, you see it? That weird tree?”

Generally I could see exactly which tree he was referring too but because I was usually gasping for breathe and not mentally ready to run (just yet) I’d quite often “have” to stop and seek clarification … and then (you know when I could breathe), off I’d trot – raising my arms in jubilation when I finally reached the weird tree/post or traffic cone that I’d been challenged to reach.

I think I can ….

Anyway considering I run slightly slower on any new tracks (as I’m unsure what’s ahead and how long I have to go) and I stop more often (because we all know that if you don’t have photos it never happened) we did ok time wise even though I had stop to ask Google Maps how to get back.

But as James said – a PB is a PB

Two days later I decided it would be a brilliant idea to go back and see if I could do the loop any faster. In theory it should have been easy, I’d already taken photos of the entire loop, so I wouldn’t have to stop (unless I couldn’t breathe or my shoe lace came undone) and (bonus) I knew where I was going so I wouldn’t have to refer to my map. The only thing troubling me is that I wouldn’t have James to encourage me to keep going.

So I set off with one goal – (with the exception of the two shoe cleaning stations) to keep moving ..

BOOM!

When I told James I’d managed to PB by a hefty 15 minutes (and 16 seconds) he exclaimed “That’s HUGE! Well done, how’d you do it?” to which I replied

“Oh! I it was pretty easy I only took 4 photos today .. ”

Till next time