Posts Tagged ‘running’

Bala is a town located in the middle of North Wales, at at the north end of Bala Lake. Importantly, they have a parkun and it is one of the four required to complete The Full Ponty challenge. I ticked off Pontefract in June, so this is the second one I needed.

The course is an out-and-back along the river with a turnaround point at the lake. You do this twice before finishing. I had had surgery a few days before so no running for me, but I had a delightful stroll along the course with the hills in the background and the lake at the end.

Another S for my snakes challenge!

Sligo parkrun has an out-and-back section before opening up to two loops of a bigger park. There is a slight hill here, but nothing compared to Temple Newsam or Cabinteely. And on the plus side, you get a beautiful view of the hills in the distance.

Sligo is a picturesque place and I stopped on the way back to take a few pictures.

Our first base camp for our road trip was the seaside town of Portrush. Long beaches, fish and chip shops, arcades, the whole classic British seaside town feel. It also had a parkrun. With Portrush being a summer hotspot, over 500 runners turned up for an out-and-back along the beach. The sand was firm enough under foot but there were some wet bits to run through. A lot of runners did it in bare feet.

After parkrun, Venla and I built the first of many sandcastles.

What better way you could spend a Saturday than running through the Dublin Mountains?

The Trail Festival is run by the same people that run the Dublin Mountain Backyard Ultra and takes you through 30k of hilly terrain with the option of doing one, two, or three loops.

The run starts at Kilmashogue Forest and goes straight up. There were about 30 of us taking on the 30 km single loop and I soon found myself at the back of the pack. The uphill was a lovely wide gravel track but also uphill. The downhill was single track and I’m not much of a trail runner so I didn’t pick up a lot of speed there. Luckily, there was a two-kilometre road section into Glencullen that allowed me to catch the back of the pack.

Trail is a word with a wide definition. Once we were through Glencullen, we ended up climbing a steep bank (I would have completely missed the turning if I hadn’t seen others) and then onto what the locals called the “bog road” where the path disappeared and we were running through small bushes. Then there was a small gully with a river at the bottom and ropes to help us climb down. The ropes did not save me and I fell over twice here.

We almost made it back onto the Wicklow Way track before turning again towards a trig point at the top of the hill. This offered spectacular views of the whole of Dublin Bay and Wicklow in one scene.

Here we got into the real bog. I stopped on what I thought was a solid bit of mud and found myself above submerged up above my knee and had to climb my way out. At around 15k, Dublin disappeared behind the hills and I felt panicked about being in the middle of nowhere even though I knew it was just over the horizon. That was an unpleasant half an hour.

At around 23k we came down into ZipIt where there was a water drop. I had brought enough food and drink for five hours but was drinking more than expected so glad to be able to refill my bottles. Then it was straight up the hill again and towards the finish. I was tired by this point and started stumbling over rocks a lot but luckily did not fall.

The final two kilometres were downhill again and my quads were on fire as I descended. I managed to find the correct turning point, which I was quite proud of, as almost everyon else that finished came in the wrong way. Very glad to be done. I’m not sure I had fun but I’m glad I did it :D.

Dundalk parkrun takes place on the Dundalk Institute of Technology campus and consists of three laps around the playing field. While it is not the most exciting of parkruns, it was well marshalled and I had fun.

Mountlucas parkrun takes place in the Mount Lucas wind farm. It is a single lap trail course and you get to pass right underneith the turbines: their foundations are just off the side of the trail and the blades pass over your head.

Lovely to have the one lap and I got a warm welcome from the volunteers. Thanks everyone, and happy 8th birthday!

Lovely parkrun along the canal. It looks like an out-and-back, but it’s actually a loop as the canal towpath and greenway run parallel to each other. Technically then, it is one of the few single loop parkruns! It was supposed to be dry all day but rained the whole time. Classic Ireland.

Still chasing down some Ses for the snakes challenge. This one was number seven. Lovely parkrun. Four laps of the sports field, so not too exciting there, but the volunteers were lovely, it was fairly flat and they had a nice cafe with toilets in the leisure centre so there nice to hang out after the run.

Every year, Blackrock Atheletics organises a run down to Teddy’s ice cream in Dún Laoghaire and the club buys everyone an ice cream. This year, I finally made it! Thank you to Gerry for organising.

It’s a parkrun. On a beach. You literally run ip the beach for two and a half kilomtres and then turn around and run back down again. It’s amazing.

The surface is surprisingly good. The sand is hard so you do not get the exhaustion of running on soft sand. It is probably not a PB course, but it’s not difficult going, either. There are a few streams to jump over and some seaweed to dodge which is all part of the fun.

It was raining heavily the day I went and continued to rain throughout the entire run. None of that killed the fun for me. No chance of sunburn, exhaustion or dehydration. It was beautiful. Where else would you want to be on a rainy Saturday morning?

Except you cannot be here every Saturday. One of the quirks of the events is that they can only run the event at low tide so it only takes place around half of the time. It is well worth the trip if you can make it, though. This is a contender for my favourite parkrun.