Acceleration = Change in Velocity/Time

Stephen Hawking was once told by his publisher that each equation he included in his book "A Brief History of Time" would halve his sales.

I wonder if the same holds true for blog posts?

This post, titled with a sketchily remembered equation from my GCSE physics, is an amalgamation of my recent running achievements and other developments.

New FiveFingers

After retiring my normal running shoes, all I had remaining were my FiveFingers KSO's and Adidas Kanadia TR4 trail shoes.
The KSO's are good, they got me on the road to minimalist running, but they do have a flaw. They have terrible grip in wet conditions. I've come close to snapping an ankle on occasion! As for the Kanadia's, I don't won to wear them out on the roads. What I needed was a middle way, a hybrid between my KSO's and Kanadia's. Turns out that Vibram have such a thing:

Behold the TrekSport!

The FiveFingers TrekSport is almost identical to the KSO but has tread on the sole to improve grip. The rubber is 1mm thicker than on the KSO so there is a slight reduction in sensation from the ground. In practice, this has not been a major issue. I have run on road, trail and cross country in these and I love them! No nearly broken ankle so far either!

parkrun

Since achieving my first sub-25:00 parkrun the other week, I've continued to make steady progress.
At Braunstone on 4/8/12, I ran a 24:14! That was delightful but paled into insignificance compared to this week's run at Conkers:

Yes, you read that correctly!

23:47!!! God only knows how I managed that! The folks at Conkers parkrun have captured me on film once again, check out my sprint finish:

I'm briefly visible at 8:32-8:34 wearing my blue sleeveless t-shirt.

After recovering from that, I found that Adidas, sponsors of both parkrun and Team GB, were giving every parkrunner a free Team GB replica wristband to celebrate the Olympics.

Not bad for a freebie!

All in all then, not a bad couple of weeks at parkrun! Unfortunately, work gets in the way next week. Although a break to recover and consolidate my gains is probably no bad thing!

Hermitage 10K 2012

Finally, the other day on a whim, I decided to enter a local 10K race. I chose the Hermitage 10K near Coalville.

It was my third 10K race this year and the first I've run in Vibram FiveFingers.

Thanks to all the running I've been doing lately, I managed to achieve my goal of a sub-1 hour race! That's another item I can cross off The List! Unfortunately, due to a glitch, official times won't be posted until at least tomorrow. However, I clocked it with my Garmin at 53:14.2, which (if accurate) betters my previous performance by 14 minutes!

Approaching the finish (Photo credit www.runner-photos.co.uk)

As is customary, I was the recipient of yet another t-shirt, a relatively plain white technical shirt. Should come in useful for training runs.

Next big race is the Great North Run.