Last Saturday I headed down to Shanganagh Park for the weekly parkrun. I'm not entirely sure why, I think it was that I felt good on Tuesday when I did a couple of faster miles and decided I may as well do the same with company, so off I went on Saturday morning.
It was a freezing cold day, there was frost all over the place, including the road, and there was a big patch of solid ice where usually the puddle is in park (and you do cross that patch 3 times in the parkrun, so definitely one to be careful). Obviously I have been around here for long enough to know that these things never start on time but that day they were a whopping 13 minutes late to get things going, which is almost Kerry-levels of timekeeping, or lack of it. If I had known about the delay I would have done a few little runs to keep warm but as it was I, and everyone else, was just standing around in the freezing cold, and when we finally got going I immediately noticed that my calves felt very stiff.
That feeling went away, and I did the parkun at about 85% of effort, enough to feel the muscles working but low enough not to feel wiped out, though I still tied up badly in the last k, and obviously I posted my slowest ever parkrun time but that's ok, there will be worse to come. However, as soon as I started my jog back home my calves were hurting straight away, and things didn't improve.
In fact, on Sunday there were so sore that I binned my morning run, and I changed my plan to go cycling instead when Niamh suggested to do a swim, so that was my workout for the day, imitating a lead balloon, and a particularly uncoordinated one at that. I survived; barely.
Anyway, the caves were still sore for about 3 more days. It felt very much like DOMS, but since it started straight after the parkun there was no delay involved, but I have no real idea what exactly was wrong, except that it did sort itself out eventually, no lasting harm done.
Parkrun is a fantastic institution and I would never complain about the volunteers who keep it going, they are delivering a fantastic service to so many people, but whatever the problem was on Saturday, they came damn close to do me in.
This is why I don't do Parkrun (yes, there's one in Tokyo now) in the winter. There's just no reason to run fast, or even semi-fast, on a cold, early morning. Unless it's a real race, in which case you presumably warm up properly.
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