Ground Breaking

In the words of my friend, I had a ground breaking morning! I ran my second Park Run at New Farm today, with the hopes of beating my previous pb of 27.41. Actually, I was hoping to get under 27min. I felt I could do it.
I started off at the back of the group with a friend. In retrospect, this might not have been the best. The first 1k was slow as I wove around people (when safe) on a narrow pathway. In the pic: I'm in the green hat on the left. Crowded, crowded, crowded! What you can't see is the pathway narrowing right after this pic.
The day was hot, but I felt strong going into the 2nd km and finished that one off with a 5.20 pace.
As we got to the turn-around, I noticed my time was 14min. Yikes! The Park Run at New Farm is such that you have three turn-arounds - you run down about 200m to the end of the park and then do a 180 turn to run back along the river path for the next couple of kms. On the way back you shoot past the finish line by about 100m before sweeping back in.
In truth, I am a terrible judge of distance. But I just want to give you a mental picture of how it works.
So when I hit the second turn-around I knew I was about halfway and that I'd run it in exactly 14min. Yikes! Double of 14min is 28min! Well over my goal. Time to pick up the pace.
Fortunately, the runners had spread out enough to give me more space to run my own pace.
km 3 - 5.13 pace
km 4- 5.07 pace

I found myself comfortable at this part of the race, but held myself back so I didn't burn out at the end.
As it turns out, this was likely a useless endeavour as even after going all out in the last 500m I finished with energy to spare.

I was slightly stunned with my finish time - I had no idea I would be that fast!

I remember my last Park Run when I was in misery the last 2k of the race. If anything, in this one I paced myself too slowly! I finished with great satisfaction of a rocking time.

Total distance: 5.00km
Total time: 25.58min
Average pace: 5.12min/km