Fountain Abbey Park Run back in the game.

  I have missed a couple of training runs this week so I thought I may as well go and do a 5k park run whilst I have a few rest days in my legs. I chose the Fountain Abbey Park Run at Ripon for my 2016 comeback debut, I guesstimated in my training log that I would be happy with completing it in 18 minutes 20 seconds. Obviously anything below that would be total awesome.
   I warmed up for a good twenty five minutes before the start of the race, fifteen minutes used to be suffice but as the years go by the legs take longer and longer before they come to life. By the time I'm sixty I will be needing to do a marathon just to get warmed up at this rate.  The route is one short lap followed by one long lap and I would say it's slightly undulating,  not the fastest of courses but in my eyes it is absolutely awesome. The scenery and setting for starters and the short slightly steepish hills, long steady descents there is plenty to work on around this course. I felt I had set off well within my capabilities as I cruised along the long steady decent by this time I was in third place and loving it, as I turned to make my way back around the short lap there was some uphill work to be done and being a good chunk over weight at the moment I made hard work of it and I slipped into 6th place. ( Plenty to work on in this section in the near future) . Not long after that the first short lap was completed and onwards it was for the long lap, back on the long decent and the feeling of speed was back again, the three runners that had come past me on the uphill section on the short lap were still roughly around 25 seconds ahead of me and I just couldn't make up any ground back on them. I must of been enjoying this race that much it didn't seem long before I crossed the river to make my way back to the finishing line. I would take a guess and say I lost another 5 seconds on the three guys in front of me but once again the metres were soon gobbled up and I crossed the line in 6th place 18 minutes 25 seconds.
   I will take that, just 5 seconds off my guesstimation and I would go as far as saying that was the most enjoyable race I have done in the last five years. Give me another two to three weeks and I will be back trying to carve off a good chunk of time.
   Ohhh, I will be making the Ripon Park Run my local park run seeing as I will be doing nearly all my park runs in the future there.
  There is something about Ripon that drags me towards it, I first arrived in Ripon in November 1987 as I was posted there in the army. I managed to get away from Ripon in 1992 but I didn't get far only about 12 miles away. The Ripon 10 mile race, I used to absolutely love that race and won it six times and still hold the course record, the Fountains 10k is another one I enjoyed and have the course record along with the Kirkby Malzeard 10k.  I never managed to win the Jolly Holly Jog 10k at Christmas time but I absolutely loved that race as well. Hopefully I will be back at most of them races this year.