Parkrun

Since last week, Umeå has its own official “Parkrun”. While I have long been fascinated by the concept, having seen how thousands of people gather on weekends throughout the UK to run five kilometres in their local parks, I have never done a parkrun myself or even a 5k race for that matter. Together with Petra at the university’s international office, I thus decided to give it a shot today as yesterday’s rain clouds gave way to clear blue skies.

Setting off way too fast (like 2:50 min/km-fast), I led the race for the first 750 meters until I was overtaken by the most relaxed Australian runner who seemed completely unaffected by how fast we were running. While I was able to match his speed for another kilometre or so, my legs simply did not have it in them to sustain the sub 4 min/km pace, so I fell further behind, ultimately finishing fourth place with an official time of 21 minutes and 14 seconds. Even if I had obviously wished for more, the event felt super social and friendly so I will definitely come back and give it another shot later this summer.