Stitches and sticking it out anyway

Today's task was an 8km run.

I got to about 1.5km in the run and started to develop an awful stitch.  I've been plagued by stitches off and on when I run, and they're usually associated with me breathing too forcefully, which is something I've been working on.

Today's stitch however was a bastard.

I managed to run through it (although looking at my GPS readout, I'm unsure how I can "run" that slowly), but it was a near thing.

After such a struggle with the first half of my run, I was anticipating a horrible time, but was pleasantly surprised when I hit the stop button to discover I'd knocked 2 minutes off my 8k PB!  Not sure where that came from, I certainly wasn't trying to.

I guess this just goes to show I really am improving, and I seem to have finally gotten to a place that I'm making regular improvements on my times.