Another Saturday, another parkrun, with no fewer than 33 Claremonters getting involved (and that’s not even counting the many valuable volunteers, it’s just not really viable to try and find the total number!).
One of the great things about parkrun is that it can be whatever you want to make it, whether that be a personal time trial, or a relaxed jog with friends. parkrun itself tries to promote inclusivity and getting people active over athletic achievement, and the thing they ‘reward’ primarily is consistency in attendance, with anyone able to mark a running or volunteer milestone with a celebratory t-shirt (and increasingly all manner of accessories, wristbands, pins, water bottles etc) should they choose. We had a double-whammy at Rising Sun today, with Peter Henderson and Gill Milne clocking 200 and 250 parkruns respectively, congratulations both on your landmarks!
It was a family affair at Town Moor, where both Roberto Marzo (son and daughter) and Rachel Hurdman (son) accompanied their young children to PB’s. The slightly older (but young at heart) Peter Noble got in on the action with his own course PB. Over at Jesmond Dene, Tara Hipwood refused to fully celebrate a course PB until the official result was confirmed, lest she jinx it, initially suffixing her Strava comment with a ‘(?)’.
There was a significant amount of tourism this week. Harry Mawdsley returned to his old stomping ground of Tübingen in southwest Germany, to the event he had a hand in setting up back in 2021: Kastanienallee (or ‘Chestnut Avenue’ as Google inadvertently translated for me!). He marked his glorious return by finishing in 1st place by over a minute.
Yana Bevan was also on familiar turf, returning to Bexley in south London for a course PB, while much further south Claire Jeffray did her duty, jumping in on barcode scanning after her run at Itchen Valley Country Park near Southampton. Following a recent 10k in her ‘second home country’ of Northern Ireland, Rose Hawkswood visited another parkrun in the area, running with her mum at Montalto Estate, Ballynahinch, a short drive south of Belfast. Entertainingly, Elizabeth O’Mahony made a pilgrimage that was presumably determined nominatively, to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Lincolnshire.
Cate and I ventured to the nascent Oakey Park in Stanley. Despite this being only its 6th event, 5 Claremonters had already trodden the path before us! The Oakey volunteers took their jobs very seriously, a helpful woman in hi-viz hanging out in Iceland car park, a good 5 minute walk away from the start, pointing runners towards signs that took us in the right direction through the woods.
My overall verdict was that it was a pleasant, reasonably interesting course, with some great views. This is however, from the perspective of someone that was jogging, if I’d been pushing hard, there might be aspects of the course that appealed slightly less, as I will explain!
Starting and finishing on a field (very yellow and dry like most of the grass in the area currently), the route skirts the edge of a football pitch (watch for some mild unevenness and rabbit holes), before entering a very short trail section through the woods, with plenty of tree roots to keep an eye on. You then join a tarmac path as you embark upon a fairly steep and lengthy hill, where less than a km in, some of the people around me decided to resort to walking. Not a kind gradient!
What follows is a nice downhill loop, which straightens out into a mostly flat out-and-back along tree and hedge-lined tarmac path, with frequent glimpses of impressive rolling hills, crossing a bridge a little before the turning point. Heading back, there’s a brief uphill climb to join the start of the loop at the bottom of the hill, retracing your steps through the woods to the starting field.
With the sun starting to come out, and encouraging, friendly marshals (including one dressed as a giant traffic cone on the turning point, and another with a speaker blasting out ‘Africa’ by Toto as I passed) it was a very enjoyable run, but as mentioned, the inclines (specifically the first) and the narrowness of the path at points with encroaching nettles, especially during the out and back, might give you pause for thought if you’re going hell-for-leather! Overall though, definitely check it out.
