In February, I attended my twentieth different parkrun venue (a big deal in the parkrun world – you get various unofficial virtual badges and things like that). I’d been meaning to try out South Shields parkrun for ages, as I’d enjoyed lots of nice days out around the area, and it finishes along the same straight as the Great North Run does.
It was a fairly cold winter’s day when I went – not really a day for enjoying the seaside! However, the route is an enjoyable meander through the sand dunes for the most part. This long section isn’t very flat or fast, but the tarmac downhill finishing straight makes up for it. Maybe it was just memories of multiple Great North Runs, but I found myself overtaking far more people than I usually do as I raced for the line!
Like a lot of the parkruns I attended this last winter, I would really, really like to do this course again in the summer. Of course, parkrun is very unlikely to return in the next few months, but hopefully we will be parkrunning again by summer 2021, and I can return to South Shields on a sunny day with Geth in tow 🙂