Battersea Race The Sun 5k, 24 Jul 2024

I’ve not raced a 5k since one memorable fun run for charity as a 15-year-old at school. I think I chatted the whole way around! This race in Battersea park was very different: advertised as a fast and flat course with an incredibly fast top-flight elite entry race beforehand, this felt like the real deal. In the last few months I’ve been attempting not to freak out about being slow at running and wanted an objective measure of where my fitness is at so that there would be enough time to fix it before the European Sprint Triathlon Championships in September and the World Standard Championships in October. Wearing super shoes and running with speedy people on tarmac I would be guaranteed to go faster than in parkrun, so I told myself.

When I last ran parkrun my warmup consisted of a teeny tiny jog and then wandering around catching up with friends – so I consciously warmed up very thoroughly and turned up to the start line feeling pleasantly sweaty and warm. The first couple of kilometers went to plan, then my pace started slowing. I just couldn’t get the air in and as kilometre three went by I started the mental maths of how much longer I could hang on. A really slow time is obviously worse than a simply slow time and by this psychological sleight of hand I convinced myself to hang on and by the final kilometre was almost back to the pace I should have been at all along.

Needless to say, despite the super shoes and the tarmac, I was just under 30 seconds slower than my parkrun time in April. Confused and frustrated, I concluded I wasn’t training enough. Only 12 hours a week with an entire rest day and I’m not even maxing out on double-session days. Trusting Tim to objectively watch over how much and how hard I’m training is literally the point of being coached but right now I’d have a go at a triple day if it would help.

Lizzie Fox

[Coach’s note - we discussed this race afterwards and have some possible answers to work on. More training is definitely not one of them!]