Storm Dave was supposed to arrive this morning. I had checked the forecast twice, and was quietly delighted about it. Not because I wanted the storm, exactly, but because a named storm feels like a legitimate reason not to go to parkrun.
Dave didn't show.
The Long Drive to Troon (That I Almost Didn't Take)
I'll be honest, the enthusiasm was not there. This is becoming a recurring theme on Saturday mornings. The alarm goes, I stare at the ceiling, and somewhere between the bed and the running shoes I have to talk myself out of a perfectly sensible case for not going.
Troon is a 25-minute drive, which doesn't help. Dean Castle is on my doorstep. Troon requires actual commitment, a journey, a car, a decision that has to be made before the brain is fully running.
But Dave had let me down, the drive happened, and by the time I pulled up at the seafront I was already slightly glad.
The Warmup (Yes, I Actually Had Time)
A 1.55km warmup first, a gentle jog around the area to get the legs remembering what they're for. Seven minutes and change, heart rate barely breaking a sweat at 112 bpm average. It works though. The first kilometre always goes better when you've done one.
Halfway through I stopped for a few minutes of leg swings, squats, and a bit of general flailing that the biomechanics people call "dynamic stretching" and the rest of us call "hoping no one is watching." It looks vaguely ridiculous at the roadside but apparently does something useful. The elapsed time on the warmup is noticeably longer than the moving time for exactly this reason.
It always feels slightly absurd, doing a warmup at a parkrun. You're already going to run 5km. What exactly are you warming up for? And yet the first kilometre always goes better when you do. So the tradition continues.
No Wind, No Hills, No Excuses
Troon's parkrun character is fundamentally different from the likes of Dean Castle. There are no hills to speak of. The elevation profile is so flat it looks like Strava accidentally imported a cycling turbo session. Troon has the coast, the sand dunes, and, usually, the wind.
The first couple of hundred metres are narrow when it's busy, and today was busy, as Easter Saturday will do. The pack shuffled through at an honest 7-something per kilometre, which is fine. You can't sprint a bottleneck. The trick is patience, then progress.
Once the course opened out, I settled quickly into what I'm currently calling my "sustainable" pace, around 6:30 per kilometre. It's the pace I can hold without the wheels coming off, the pace where the legs are working but nothing's falling apart.
The usual plan at Troon is to hold that through to the dunes and then brace for the final kilometre headwind off the Firth of Clyde. On a normal day, you come out of the dunes and the coast hits you with a wall of cold air pushing back, the kind that makes the last kilometre feel approximately 40% longer than it actually is.
Today, that wind wasn't there.
12 km/h from the south, barely a breeze. Overcast, cold (5.5°C, feels like 2°C, the sort of morning that rewards gloves), but calm. When I came out of the dunes with a kilometre to go and didn't get the usual gust in my face, something clicked. The legs had been saving themselves for a fight that wasn't coming. So instead of surviving the last kilometre, I got to actually run it.
The Numbers
5.01km in 31:31, a 2026 PB and the first time I've been below 32 minutes this year. The official parkrun time was 31:36, which is the difference between me starting and stopping my watch and the marshals doing it properly. Average pace of 6:17 per kilometre, which is better than the 6:30 I'd budgeted for. The story is really in the splits though.
| Km | Pace | What Was Happening |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6:34 | Narrow start, shuffling through the pack, practicing patience |
| 2 | 6:20 | Course opened up, stride found, the engine properly engaged |
| 3 | 6:26 | Into the dunes, steady effort, keeping it together |
| 4 | 6:21 | Holding on, one km of course remaining, half-expecting the wind |
| 5 | 5:46 | No wind. The legs had been saving this. Neither of us knew until now. |
That final kilometre, 5:46 per km and nearly 50 seconds faster than the first, is what happens when you budget for a headwind and it doesn't collect. Heart rate climbed steadily from 126 bpm in kilometre one to a peak of 158 at the line. Controlled early, committed late, which is about as textbook as effort curves get. Cadence held at 168 steps per minute throughout. Zero elevation gain.
Weather: 5.5°C, feels like 2°C, 12.5 km/h southerly. Technically some wind, but nothing the Firth of Clyde would be proud of.
The Easter Bunny Made an Appearance
Someone had committed to the full Easter Bunny costume (ears, tail, the works) and was not, it turns out, there for a gentle jog. The Bunny finished well ahead of me. By a considerable margin. I would say I wasn't racing a giant rabbit, but the data suggests otherwise, and the data is not flattering.
Getting beaten by a giant rabbit on Easter Saturday is both humbling and genuinely brilliant. Parkrun is a wonderful thing.
What I Learned
Troon without wind is a genuinely different course. I've run it before and always filed it under nice flat route, shame about the final kilometre, but without that headwind it becomes something quite pleasant. Flat, fast-ish (for me), and just enough to feel like a proper effort.
The PB is probably part course, part conditions. But it's also a reminder that pacing early and having something left at the end is a strategy that actually works. I didn't go out hard. I didn't push the first kilometre. I settled, held steady, and when the final kilometre gave me something to work with, the legs were still there.
I'll take that.
Troon parkrun takes place every Saturday at 9:30am along the Ayrshire coast. Free, timed, and occasionally accompanied by seasonal wildlife.