250th parkrun

I heard about parkrun over 6 years ago, but didn't consider going along for at least 6 months because, although I'd been running for a couple of years, I did not consider myself to be 'a runner!'  I didn't want to be the slow one, plodding around at the back with everyone else tapping their feet as they waited for me to finish.  I can't remember what happened to make me change my mind but, on 21st May 2011, I took the plunge and found myself, barcode in hand, in War Memorial Park with a load of strangers.  This was A BIG STEP for me.  I am quite uncomfortable in situations that are new and that involve lots of people I don't know.  I need not have worried.  Everyone was very friendly and I wasn't last.  It was the first time I had ever run a timed 5k and I surprised myself by being able to finish in just under 25 minutes.  I ran, got my barcode scanned and drove home.

But I came back the next week and did it again.  By July, I was turning up almost every Saturday and had probably turned into something of a parkrun bore, telling everyone I could about this amazing parkrun thing.  I volunteered a few times, which was good as it meant that I got to know some of the other regulars - this meant I had enough confidence to brave going along for the post run coffee.  This involved meeting more and more parkrunners, and hearing about (and subsequently entering) lots of races I would not have even have heard of without parkrun.  

It is quite amazing how quickly parkrun became such a integral part of my life, and how many of my friends seem to have decided that it is easier to go to parkrun than to listen to me extol its virtues!  I've visited 51 different parkruns, mainly because they were near where I happened to be on a Saturday morning, and made loads of new friends.  Obviously I've missed a few Saturdays when I've been involved in Saturday races, have had to work on Saturday or been injured, and several runs have been given up in exchange for volunteering at parkrun, but in the main, if it was 9am on a Saturday, I was to be found in a park getting ready for a 5k!

Which brings me to this morning.  Although my 'home run' is Basingstoke, Husbando struggles to get to that venue as he has to work on Saturday. Alice Holt he can do and make it to work afterwards.  Alice Holt also has a lovely large gazebo for setting out cakes, a cafe and nice loos, and I was involved (a little bit!) in setting it up four years ago - so I decided that it would be the venue for my 250th parkrun.  I set up an 'event' on Facebook and sent out some invitations, thinking that a few people might be interested in coming along, especially if I bribed them with cake and fizz!  A friend I'd met via parkrun sent me a message saying that he was coming along and coincidently running his 100th parkrun - so double the celebration!  I stayed up late baking and icing cakes and arrived at Alice Holt fairly early.  As I laid out the cakes I saw a constant stream of familiar faces emerging from the mist - people I hadn't seen for ages and ages and who had travelled for miles and miles just to run 5k with me!  Some people hadn't even come to run - they'd just got out of bed early on a very chilly Saturday morning to come and watch the rest of us run!

Having run 249 parkruns without ever having forgotten a barcode, my 250th nearly had to be delayed - I realised that my barcodes were not in my pocket (I keep all 7 on a treasury tag and they have vanished).  Panic stations ensued!  Could I get home and back and still run?  Could I ask Husbando to give up his run and go home and print out spares?  Would he know how to do that without a tutorial?  Then I remembered that I am a parkrunner, and a parkrunner always has spare barcodes somewhere in every car.  Crisis averted with a mad dash to the car and a rummage round to find a tatty ziplock bag which had the required barcodes.

After setting a new Alice Holt PB last week, and with a 6 hour challenge tomorrow, I knew that I wasn't going to set any records today.  And I wanted to enjoy my run, not end up gasping for every drop of oxygen I could find at the end of the run.  Husbando and I had a nice, chatty run.  It felt so much easier than last week, but I was 44 seconds slower.  

It was wonderful to chat to so many people afterwards, I am really touched that so many people came to help me celebrate.  I really do love my parkrun family.  Huge thanks to PSH, whose love child parkrun is, to all the event directors, run directors and volunteers who make the many, many parkruns across the globe happen every week.  I'll see you in a park (somewhere) next parkrun day!  

P.S.  Is it wrong that I am wondering if the second 250 parkruns will take more or less time to achieve than the first? 

Run, run as fast as you can!

Saturday was a much anticipated day in our house.  My 9 year old was going to run his 50th parkrun.  He ran his first parkrun in October 2011 and, after a bit of a rocky start, he really knuckled down recently and started coming to every parkrun with me.  Obviously he is dependent on me to get him to parkruns, but on a couple of occasions he has persuaded friends of mine to drive him over and, as his 50th loomed ever closer he got Husbando to drive him to Alice Holt parkrun and run that parkrun with him.

When he ran his first parkrun it took him 43minutes and 37 seconds to complete 5k.  He'd got progressively faster over the 22 months, but we'd been stuck at around 33minutes.  His PB was 32.51, which he set a couple of weeks ago.  As we drove to War Memorial Park we talked about maybe trying for a PB. Wouldn't it be nice to get a PB on this special day?

We lined up at the start.  I was chatting with a much faster running friend who was recovering from injury.  The three of us set off running at a nice, easy pace.  An easy pace for my friend and I, but a little ambitious for the boy wonder, or so I thought.  He just kept going!  He didn't whinge, he wasn't grumpy, he just kept going, and going, and going.  Just as we got to the 'bus stop' (that's what it looks like!) on the last lap I looked at my watch.  28 minutes.  I turned to my friend and asked quietly, so that my boy couldn't hear, whether we could do sub 30.   We thought it was possible, if not probable, so pushed him on a bit.  He powered on through the woods, up hill and along the twisting path, overtaking people as we went.  As he came out of the woods, with the finish funnel in sight, loads of people started cheering.  He shouted out an alliterated phrase that he'd obviously been planning for the entire route and sprinted to the finish - crossing the line in 30 minutes and 1 pesky second! As we chatted on the way home he did point out that if we had started at the front he'd 'easily' have been sub 30.  I said that if he'd started at the front he'd have been flattened!

I'd made cakes to celebrate - cakes and parkrun seem to go together very nicely.  It was lovely to sit around in the sunshine chatting with friends, catching up with a lovely parkrunner who was running her 150th parkrun.  There is no parkrun shirt for 150 runs - but it is a fantastic achievement non the less, and was marked with a certificate made by our Event Director.

I am incredibly proud of my boy!  He has worked so hard and Saturday's run really showed him that a huge factor in running well is deciding that you are going to run well.  He has a real runner's attitude, he will finish a run whatever it takes.  He is always up for a run with me during the week.  He may not be as fast as some boys his age, but he can keep on going, and going and going!  And he will improve over time.  He'll be faster than me one day!

Today saw me heading on up to Bushy Park for the first Run 10 for Mo race. I was glad that I had been to the Bushy parkrun a few weeks ago as it meant I knew where I was going, where I'd park etc.  The event was smaller than the parkrun, limited to a maximum of 500 runners, the entry fee was a very reasonable £5, but every runner was expected to raise £75 for the Farah Foundation.  I would be surprised if there were more than 300 runners.  I'm not sure what happened.  Maybe they didn't raise the sponsorship, maybe the fact that the race was starting at 12 noon in the middle of summer put them off.

A shower of rain at about 11am made me pretty sure we were going to have some nice cool weather.  The clouds vanished just before 12 and the temperature started to soar.  After the usual pre race announcements we were off.  The route was totally flat, and on a mixture of grass, gravel and a little bit of tarmac.  I am not a fan of gravel or grass, and had decided before I set out that would not be getting a PB today.  Doing this of course meant that I was not in the right frame of mind to get a PB.  I ran the first mile too fast, hated mile 2, 3 and 4.  I was doing maths in my head, working out how slow I could run and still finish in under an hour!  (My PB is 49.16).   The heat was sapping, it wasn't a busy race, and the supporters, whilst enthusiastic, were thin on the ground.  I just wanted it all to be over.  I normally feel like this at some point in a race, normally really early on, before I've settled into a rhythm, but that rhythm never materialised today - despite what one of the runners said about my 'lovely, even running rhythm.'  Even with less than half a mile to go it wouldn't have taken much persuasion for me to quit.  Still, needs must, and you can't run a race without a sprint finish.  I managed to put a brief spurt of speed on, and overtook a couple of runners in the final few metres to finish 9th lady and 61st overall.

After getting my breath back and chatting to a few people, I ran back around the course to find a friend and run in with her.  It was lovely to see her and encourage her to the finish - and boy, does that girl have a turn of speed when it comes to a sprint to the line!   (Time 52:38)

We collected our goodie hags - nice quality bag with tech vest, running socks, pencil and wrist band.  No medal, which is a shame, because I do like a bit of bling, but nice to get a vest rather than a tshirt!  Last time I was at Bushy Park I had to dash home, but today I had time to linger and have a late lunch at The Peasantry Cafe.  What a lovely place!  Great company - meeting runners from Reading parkrun, good food, lovely park setting - what more could one want?

Of course, those of you who know me will be aware that I am training for a marathon, and that a 10k/6 mile race does not constitute a long slow run.  So more miles were required.  When I got home I went for a run with my 9yo, then after a short break and an iced coffee, a run with Husbando to take the total mileage up to 13.7 miles for the day.  The last run was really hard.  Alice Holt Forest seemed to have an awful lot of hills, and a lot of gravel.  And my legs were very tired.  Still, I did it.  And a Sunday where I only wear pyjamas, running kit and pyjamas again can't be bad!

Alice Holt inaugural parkrun

About six months ago I answered a request for people to help set up a new parkrun.  It was all very exciting, planning new routes, meeting new people, setting up new Facebook pages and so on.  Sadly, due to work and home commitments, I couldn't play as active a part in the event team as I would have liked, but I still kept up to date with what was going on (as I have admin rights on the Facebook page!) and was thrilled to hear that the event was starting today.  

I'd run a couple of the proposed routes with Martin Bushell (event director) and other members of the team back in June, but I hadn't even looked to see where the official route would take us.  Alice Holt is far from flat, so I knew we would be in for an interesting run.  

This is now my nearest parkrun, being about 4 miles up the road from me, this meant that I could have a little bit of a lie in this morning, getting up at ten past seven rather than seven o'clock!  I chivied the two younger boys into their shorts and trainers, drank a quick cup of tea, transferred my Alice Holt parking ticket from one car to another, checked I had all the barcodes and bundled the children into the car.  Finding a parking place at 8.30am is not going to be a problem at this venue - there are vast pay and display car parks.  Canny locals tell me that there are free car parks a short walk away, but I'm far too lazy for that!

It was lovely to see so many friendly faces at the start.  There were regulars there from Basingstoke and Frimley Lodge parkruns, Chineham Park Running Club had a huge presence on the day, and I spotted several people from the online running community that is Fetcheveryone.  parkrun royalty was represented by Paul Sinton-Hewitt (it is his fault we are all up early running round parks in the first place) and Danny Norman (of 'The parkrun show' fame).   Event director Martin welcomed us all to the forest and did the first of many very successful pre-run briefings.  If he was nervous it didn't show!  

And then we were off!  The start is nice and wide, with a gentle downhill slope for the first couple of hundred metres.  'Not so fast Freddy' and I fell into step (for a little while) beside a lady with a 50 club t shirt on and we ran and chatted for a while.  We talked about various things running related, and she mentioned that she runs round marathons counting them out in parkruns.  'That's odd,' I said, 'There was a lady on the parkrun show the week before last who said the same thing!'  'That's because that lady was me!' said Louise Ayling! 

The two lap course is lovely, very up and down, but the hills are quite short so you don't notice them too much!  It is a beautiful place to run and I reckon the changing seasons will provide plenty of wonderful scenery.    

It was wet and quite slippery today, Freddy went flying at one point fairly early on, covering his 10 club t-shirt in thick mud.  Strangely (!) he was quite grumpy about the whole thing after that and I really had to cajole/bully/threaten/bribe him round.  On the plus side this did give me time to chat with the wonderful marshals and to take photos!  Another advantage is that if I run it on my own I will easily get a PB!  My other son had run on ahead of us.  

We were only lapped by one person, I do hate being lapped, but was gracious and cheered Danny on!  Danny in turn encouraged Freddy as he passed us (again) on his warm down lap!  I don't think this will ever be a very fast 5k course, even in dry conditions as it is quite undulating with a lot of uneven ground (which was quite 'challenging' for my dodgy foot), but is it a fun course with lots of twists and turns.

Coffee afterwards at The Cafe on The Green was very welcome on a chilly morning.  Lots of chance to socialise, eat cake, discuss the route, eat cake, talk about other parkruns and eat cake.  Actually, the boys both had the 'woodsman breakfast' which was good value at £4.95 each and looked delicious.  The coffee was good too!  

My middle child is planning to do his ESB exam talk about parkrun this year, and was keen to get pictures of all four club T-shirts (and their wearers!) in one place.  Danny (250), Nicola (100),Freddy (10) and an as yet unknown member of the 100 club obliged.  I am very grateful, as is he! 

So, will I change my home parkrun?  Probably not, but I will try to run my local parkrun on a regular basis.  I have one son who loved Alice Holt and one who swears he will never run it again (that'll be because he fell over!) but will happily volunteer!  So to keep everyone, including me, happy (I like a shopping fix after my B'stoke parkrun as well as a gossip with my B'stoke parkrun family) it looks as though we will be visiting Alice Holt occasionally.    If any of my running buddies wants to visit Alice Holt parkrun I am more than happy to meet you there!