Posts Tagged ‘running’

A lovely parkrun. It’s a three-loop course and largely flat. Busy but a possible PB course if you started at the front. Lots of nice scenery, too, as well as toilets and a cafe. This ticks off my south on the compass club challenge so I just need an east to finish it now.

Oldham parkrun takes place in Alexandra Park, Oldham. It is well worth a visit from Leeds as you can take the A672 and get some beautiful views over the Pennines.

Alexandra Park itself is lovely with toilets, a large playground, a cafe, tennis courts, lakes and lots of other interesting features. The playground and the toilets could use some love, though. The parkrun uses the slogan “like hills? Love Oldham parkrun” so I was surprised at how flat it was: three laps of mostly running from one side of the park to the other, with a hill at each end. So there are hills but nothing compared to Temple Newsam, Chevin, Middleton Woods, etc.

It is a three-lap course and there were plenty of marshals on the route. Thank you to everyone at Oldham for having us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Six years ago, Toby had a dream: that every hour, for twelve hours, we would run three laps around Woodhouse Moor. After the psychiatrist discharged him from hospital, he set about making this dream a reality. Around the Park, Around the Clock was born. This year would be it’s sixth running.

The weather was good this year. Warm but not too hot and no rain all day. It was only a week after God’s Own Backyard Ultra meaning that if you include both weekends, ABC and parkrun, I was looking at 182km of running over the week. Luckily, no injuries, just fatigue.

The big race news was that Rich was away in the Lakes. Rich, Toby and myself were the only three to have done all twelve laps all five years and now sadly we’re down to two. There was no lack of experience, though. We worked out that Toby, Robyn and myself have now done 612 laps of Woodhouse Moor as part of this event. And probably over a thousand more if we threw in parkrun.

Loads of well dones and thank yous to give out: Toby, Robyn, Helen, Lara and Matt for completing the full thing. Naomi also completed a lap every hour. Elina for brining the picnic and Venla for getting a few laps in. My mum for completing an amazing 20k setting a new personal best distance, as did Sharron with 25k, and Donna running her first marathon/ultra with 45k complete. Toby for organising, another set of dozen facts, and the post-race pint. Everyone who dropped in and out to keep us company. And Robyn for making the trip over to provide her excellent company, despite having a 50k ultra and Windermere Marathon coming up on consecutive weekends.