Oriam was not the plan for the 30th of December!
The plan was Edinburgh (Cramond) for the first time in four years – a nice sprint up and/or down the promenade, depending on which direction the wind was blowing. I was confident I would beat my course PB of 29:50 and perhaps even sneak another all-time PB if the conditions were right.
However, the conditions were not right. The conditions were in fact so wrong that Edinburgh, along with many other parkruns in the area, cancelled on the morning. Too icy!
As such, it was a last-minute dash to Oriam instead. I had also not been to Oriam in four years, and I was also confident of a course PB – though I couldn’t actually remember what my existing course PB was! I only remembered being fairly slow on the one previous occasion I had visited (for my 100th parkrun in December 2019), largely due to the insane mud on the course.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t finish 2023’s parkrunning with a fast parkrun, but as far as traily/hilly courses are concerned, I kept up with my very respectable recent efforts. To my Jesmond Dene 28:41 and Pendle 28:42, I added an Oriam 28:30 – which was an 8 minute 7 second course PB, following a 36:37 back in 2019. Not bad after a slightly manic morning with the change of plan!
No photo for Oriam as I was too distracted (and wanted to get home and out of the -2°C weather – brrr).
Thankfully Portobello went ahead as planned on New Year’s Day after cancelling on the 30th. Geth and I have been doing our NYD parkrun there ever since we started NYD parkrunning! It was even more rammed than usual – like sardines at the start – and I wasn’t at all surprised to hear later that they’d broken their attendance record (with 521). Hats off to the run director, who did a superb job with the briefing after the megaphone failed, and to the crowd, who maintained a respectful silence while this was going on.
It took me about two minutes to get through the Portobello bottleneck but I still got a really decent time – 26:52, which was a course PB of about 7 and a half minutes! About as good a start to 2024 as I could have wished for.
