Rather surprising

I ran Eastleigh parkrun today in 18:52.  I was astonished.  I was going as fast as I dared, and I was working hard for sure, but I wasn't competing.  I was mentally holding back, looking after my recovering heel.

In context, this is just 6 seconds slower than the 18:44 I clocked in April last year, before this whole wretched Achilles stuff began.  It also age-grades me at 76.33, apparently my best ever on this course.

Here's the graph of my performance at the current Eastleigh course (since April 2012).

This is excellent! Could it be that the ancillary stuff I've been doing in the last few months (lunges, deadlifts etc.) is making a difference?  Let's see.