Have you ever turned up to run a quick parkrun only for the wind to be blowing a gale? At Hastings, my local parkrun the wind is predominantly from the South West, which hits us hard at the turnaround point.

So often it will feel easier to the halfway mark and then the minute you turn, it gets messy. In those conditions running a fast time is extremely challenging and it can become mentally and physically draining.

I see it a lot, runners quitting or letting their effort level drop once the conditions get tough. It’s understandable and I’ve been in that situation myself. So how do we combat that and still get a good training session in?

Well that’s where the parkrun halfway challenge comes into action. This is an ideal training session for a parkrun like Hastings. Seaford is another local parkrun which springs to mind as that will likely be back into the wind on the return leg.

The idea is simple. Get yourself a decent warm up first and then hammer the first 2.5k of parkrun at quicker than your normal 5k pace, probably quite a bit quicker in truth, especially if you have a nice strong wind behind.

Then as soon as you hit the turnaround, stop and use the return leg as your cooldown, running as slowly as you want into the headwind.

This can turn a potentially very miserable and hard run into an enjoyable speed session. If running considerably quicker than your 5k pace, what you should also find, is you will be among quicker runners on the outward section of parkrun.

Given it’s likely to be a short session, it’s important to work hard and push the pace from the word go. The first km might not feel too bad but your heart rate is going to climb fairly quickly. So be prepared to still dig deep.

You can either set yourself a time to beat in future attempts. This session has a training points score of 21 points which is actually pretty good. Including your strides beforehand is very important given the pace you will be starting at.

In total you’ll clock close to 8km or 5 miles. So don’t be put off by the fact you’re only doing half a 5k at high effort. Sometimes it’s more important that we enjoy your training and this is one way to achieve that on a windy day, at a coastal out and back parkrun like Hastings or Seaford.