{"id":9986,"date":"2026-10-31T10:38:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/?p=9986"},"modified":"2026-10-31T10:39:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:39:53","slug":"a-cautious-5k-turns-into-a-pleasant-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/31\/a-cautious-5k-turns-into-a-pleasant-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cautious 5K Turns into a Pleasant Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">North Downs Ridge 50k Training Block - Week 1\/17<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It's Saturday, so that can only mean one thing: parkrun! For the time being it's back to something nice and local, with just a short walk from home to the start line at Worthing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" src=\"https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9987\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-767x432.jpg 767w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-2048x1153.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_085434-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was one slight complication, though. My left foot was still feeling a little sore, so the plan was very much to take things easy and see how it went. I'd wondered whether the discomfort might be related to tight calves, so I spent a bit of time stretching those out before leaving the house, although it didn't seem to make much difference. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect once I started running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I positioned myself right at the back of the field and eased into the first kilometre. The good news was that everything seemed absolutely fine. No pain, no noticeable discomfort and nothing to suggest that the foot was going to cause any problems. I gradually settled into the run, keeping a close eye on how things felt and reminding myself that I needed to back off immediately if anything started to feel wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" src=\"https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9988\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-767x432.jpg 767w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-2048x1153.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/dankew.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261031_084614-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the time I reached 4km, everything was still in order. Feeling reasonably confident, I decided to push on for the final kilometre and make the most of it. I crossed the finish line with a very respectable <strong>26-minute 5K<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Given that I'd gone into the morning expecting little more than a gentle jog, that's a pretty pleasing result. More importantly, there was no noticeable foot pain during the run. After a week of wondering whether I'd need to take some time off, it was a welcome bit of encouragement. The only question now is how things develop over the rest of the day. But right now, everything seems settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"responsive-strava-container\" style=\"width: 100%; max-width: 100% !important;\">\n    <style>\n        \/* This targets the iframe that the Strava script generates inside the placeholder *\/\n        .responsive-strava-container iframe,\n        .responsive-strava-container .strava-embed-placeholder {\n            width: 100% !important;\n            max-width: 100% !important;\n            min-width: 100% !important;\n        }\n    <\/style>\n    \n<div class=\"strava-embed-placeholder\" data-embed-type=\"activity\" data-embed-id=\"20800613883\" data-style=\"standard\" data-from-embed=\"false\" data-token=\"EysShacim6a2sfaTZ3liJX6DjOwNa4GAeexsWK2r_XA\"><\/div><script src=\"https:\/\/strava-embeds.com\/embed.js\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>North Downs Ridge 50k Training Block - Week 1\/17 It's Saturday, so that can only mean one thing: parkrun! For the time being it's back to something nice and local, with just a short walk from home to the start line at Worthing. There was one slight complication, though. My left foot was still feeling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","_lightning_design_setting":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1603,1604,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-running","category-journal","category-blog"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9991,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9986\/revisions\/9991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankew.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}