Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Isabel Trail parkrun takes place in Stafford and follows and out-and-back along the Isabel Trail. It’s mostly tarmac with some gravel bits. It’s well organised: when I turned up there was a marshal explaining where I could park. They had a megaphone for the announcements, too, but there were a few dogs that screamed the whole way through so I have no idea what was said. It was well marshalled for an out-and-back.

Isabel Trail is currently the most northerly I parkrun, which makes completing the Old MacDonald challenge a tough one for us Northerners. Luckily, I already have one I from Illaunmanagh. Still need a second E, though!

Jubilee parkrun is located in the town of Spennymoor, just over the border into County Durham. It’s a lovely park with a bowling green, two playgrounds and some sports fields. The course is four laps of the park and despite it being quite a mild slope, as each lap goes up and down twice, you end up with a lot of elevation gain from going from the bottom of the park to the top nine times.

Jubilee means I finally have my J. Just Z missing from my alphabet now. Thank you to all of the friendly volunteers for making the trip worthwhile.

North Yorkshire Water Park is an inline water park offering swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, wakeboarding and other such activities. They also have a parkrun on a Saturday morning that involves two laps of the trail around the lake. It’s a lovely venue with toilets and a cafe offering hot cooked food.

I needed a north for the compass club challenge, adding to the west I got from Newcastle West.

Now run by the Brownlee Foundation, Ripon Triathlon takes place on Ripon race course. I have raced here before in 2022 when I did Dalesman but this was my first time back.

We decided to make a day of it, which meant getting up at the eye watering time of 4:30 to get on the road by 5:30 and there by 6:30. In the end, they did not close transition at 7:30 so I could have comfortably arrived at least 30 minutes later. Lesson for next time.

They did not announce the water temperature until just before the race so we were all nervously waiting to find out if we could wear wetsuits or not. In the end, we could. Which was great because I was pretty anxious anyway during the swim. I did some breaststroke and then felt more confident coming up to the first buoy. I then felt panicked again on the way back before finally getting into it and finishing strong.

The lake was less weedy than I remembered. But the last time I swam here it was possibly the weediest swim I’ve ever done, so the bar was pretty high.

The bike course was lovely. Very flat. Which again, contrasted with the 2,000 metres of elevation gain I had to take on last time I raced here. The course was about 24 km long and I couldn’t remember the exact distance so I wasn’t too sure when it was going to end.

Finally, onto the run. It takes a lot of the same route as Dalesman did, but without the long out-and-back stretch. I paused half way through to watch a baby hedgehog cross the road. Time well wasted in my opinion. And then it was into the finish.

My time was:

1:36:24

And my splits were:

I couldn’t quite keep up with the race winner, Alistair Brownlee, who finished in 1:01:35.

There is never a bad reason to visit Doncaster. But it is especially nice when you are there to do Sandall Park parkrun. It is two-and-a-bit laps around the park, tarmac and grass, and flat by Yorkshire standards.

This ticks off the snakes challenge for me: Skipton, Selby, Shanganagh, Sport Ireland Campus, St Anne’s, Stormont, SETU Arena, Sligo, Sheffield Castle and Sandall Park.

Every summer, thousands of runners gather in Bramham Park to take part in Endure24: a 24-hour running race where the aim is to do as many 8km laps as you can within the time limit. Participants take part as solos, pairs or teams. I did the virtual Endure24 over COVID but this was my first time at the thing itself.

I turned up on the Friday and met up with Robyn for the shake out run, which is one lap of the course. It was great to catch up and see what the course is like ahead of the race. I then went home and slept in my nice comfortable bed ready for the race starting the next day.

Back to Braham Park on Saturday to meet up with the rest of my team: Grace, Jed and Matt, to take on the race. I wouldn’t describe myself as a big outdoor person (despite all of the triathlon and adventure racing) so camping is a bit out of my comfort zone. Thanks to Matt for lending me a tent.

The race starts at noon and we each did a lap before moving to double laps. The first twelve flew by: we originally were thinking an hour per lap but having the break means you can go faster than you would on a solo ultra. All speed is relative, though, and by the end of lap eight, both Charlotte and Toby had lapped us.

By around 10 o’clock we had all done three laps each and moved onto the night laps. I had said I was going to take on more of the night shift as I wanted to run when it was cooler. It got down to about 12 degrees at night, so still a little on the warm side even in shorts and t-shirt. My mood was up-and-down at night. When I first started I was thinking maybe I’ll do even more night laps after my double but by the end my stomach was complaining and I wanted to get some sleep. So, after Matt did his night lap, we had nobody running for an hour or so. It would have been nice to do the sunrise lap but I just wasn’t up for it at the time.

In the morning, we switched back to single laps and cycled through two each, before crossing the line together.

In total, we managed 25 laps as a team. We set out as a chill team so there was no target, but everyone hit their individual target of getting six laps in (48km, making it an ultra distance) and my extra night lap took us up to 25 as a team, meaning we hit 200km overall.

After the race, we went to the Endure24 pub. The event village has a pub, cafe, several food vans, an ice cream van, a medical and sports massage tent, and some retailers. And a fire pit at night.

There were some brilliant performances to mention. Charlotte completed 23 laps, finishing first lady and second overall. Toby completed 20 laps to complete the 100 miles, and Robyn crushed 10 laps for a total of 80km at her first 24-hour event. Eleanor took second in the female pairs. Well done to everyone who took part, and thank you to my teammates for running with me.

Sheffield Castle parkrun is a proper Sheffield parkrun: hilly. My watch recorded over 100m of elevation gain. It’s difficult to know how accurate that is, but it is believable that it is hillier than both Temple Newsam and Cabo. It takes place at Manor Fields park and there is no castle. Full-size castle, I should say, as there is clearly one in the picture. Everyone was friendly and they even had water on the course during the heatwave.

This is my 9th parkrun beginning with S.

A mile is pretty short for me. I wouldn’t usually run it, but I’m trying to get more involved in the club championships and also it was next to my house. All of my training this year has been for God’s Own Backyard Ultra and then for triathlon so I came into the race having done no speed work whatsoever.

Which was unfortunate because when I signed up, I didn’t really think about what time to put in; I just put six minutes because that’s what I put last time. But last time I was in the middle of a three-Ironmans in a year season shattering all of my personal bests. This year, the best I had run was 1,500 in 6:50 and now I found myself in the same heat as Dan and Curtis.

Luckily, it wasn’t all bad. One person was slower than me, and I managed to catch a second fairly quickly as well. I under-paced myaelf because I had no idea that I was capable of and managed to catch another two or three on the line. And to be fair, it is really hard to know how fast you will run unless you train for that distance. In the end, my time was:

6:23.7

Pretty respectable. That was the gun time; chip time was 6:21.8. Faster than four days previous and only 45 seconds slower than when I was on fire in 2021. Plus, it was a heatwave so take a couple of seconds off for that.

I also marshalled this year. I’m usually pretty protective about my sport time as it’s not work/parenting/charity (if you ignore the coaching and the run-leading) but as it was the club race I made an exception and had a lovely chat with Lucas while we marshalled.

Thanks to Anne for the photo. Beautifully capturing my flying feet. Bit worried about the landing angle of my foot.

It finally happened. Six-ish years ago, we started tossing the idea of doing a mixed team relay triathlon as a family. Then someone put a wedding in the middle of triathlon season. Then someone got pregnant. Then someone moved to Ireland for three years. Finally, in 2026, everyone was in the same country.

Cholmondeley Castle is located in Cheshire and the mixed team relay event starts at the very civilised time of 3pm. It is part of the Castle Triathlon Series, of which I’ve previously done Castle Howard and Lough Cutra. My dad has some special team t-shirts made up ahead of the race. 214 represents our combined age.

Pre-race was a little stressful. The water got too warm in the afternoon and they declared it would be a non-wetsuit swim for under 60s. This was my 67th triathlon and the first time ever an event organiser has enforced no wetsuits. Not ideal as I was still rebuilding my confidence in open water: the Wednesday before was the first time I had swam with a wetsuit rather than a wetsuit and tow float.

However, there were only 13 teams in the race and the field spread out on the first leg so by the time I picked up the second leg, I had the entire water safety crew to myself. The swim out to the fist buoy was scary, the second was okay, and the third one was reedy.

The bike course is a 4.2km lap around the castle with some flat and straight roads on the first half where you can get down into the aero position, before a few mild hills and some slightly more technical corners. The run is more challenging, being mostly trail straight up the hill to the castle, around the back, and then zigzagging back to the start.

A big well done to everyone who raced and thank you to everyone at Castle Race Series for organising the event.

Roberts Park is in Saltaire. The parkrun is two laps of the park and an extended bit down the river. There are a couple of choke points that slow everything down but its reasonably scenic and they had an army of volunteers. Thanks to everyone who made it happen.