Sunday August 27

Day 31 – Saving my legs

The project: A month-long stint of pounding the fields and lanes of Sussex in my hapless and ill-advised attempt to complete a quintessentially English 5k race between two local pubs. Yes, a pint of beer awaits every finisher!

Dear Reader,

TODAY HAS BEEN THE LAST DAY OF TRAINING BEFORE TOMORROW’S RUN!

In my thirty days of training so far I have not yet run 5km, and although as part of my practice I have run around two thirds of tomorrow’s race route, I haven’t run it in its entirety.

This morning I thought I’d better keep my legs nice and fresh for tomorrow, so I chose the rowing machine rather than the road. Thanks to other commitments I didn’t have time on my side, so I settled for just 20 minutes. I had also decided to row at a slower pace than usual: I hope the kind of pace at which I’ll want to be settling in to the run in the morning.

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

With tomorrow’s August Bank Holiday Monday being the last bank holiday¹ before Christmas there are all kinds of end-of-summer events going on – agricultural shows, ploughing matches and classic car meets – and our local pub-to-pub 5k, the King’s Head Canter, fits right in at the ‘quirky’ end of the billing. A neighbour of ours ran it atop a pair of sprung stilts a few years ago, and many stick-on moustaches have put in appearances in previous races. Others take it rather more seriously… 😁

I’m confident that tomorrow’s final Jog log 🏃🏻 post will be illustrated with a snap of a sweaty Rebecca beaming from ear to ear with a pint in hand at the finish line of the KHC. With you cheering me on I’m sure I can reach my goal!

How quickly will I get to the destination pub tomorrow? (Plot spoiler: not very! 🤣)

Here are the stats:

Parkrun 5k personal best (2017): 29:00
That was on flat ground, not tomorrow’s relentlessly uphill route

My fastest KHC time (2017): 32:21
I was running 5k with my club two or three times a week back then!

My slowest KHC time (2019): 45:23
This was on a VERY hot day, and I’d done no training 🙄

Average time to run a 5k for a female beginner in my age group: 39:39
Data kindly provided by Matthew Murray at

Writer's Notebook

- thanks, Matt!

I hope to make it in less than three-quarters of an hour. Dear Reader, you don’t mind if I don’t though, do you? 😘😉

Love,

Rebecca

The Jog Log Stats – Day 31

Session: Rowing machine
Duration: 20 minutes
Distance: A deliberately slow and steady 3,266m

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Thank you for reading my Jog log!

Follow my month-long stint of pounding the fields and lanes of Sussex in my attempt to complete a quintessentially English 5k race between two local pubs.

I’m not sending these posts out by e-mail, but you can always check in with how things are going by clicking Jog log 🏃🏻 in the top navigation bar on the web browser version of my Substack homepage.

1. That’s what we call a public holiday over here