Tag: parkrun

Catchup of last weekend and this weekend! No photos as I keep forgetting.

I said last time that I really didn’t expect to continue with the course PBs last weekend at Leazes. I’d already run my second fastest ever parkrun there a fortnight previously, and I was really starting to feel the Thursday long runs from marathon training in my legs, so I was sure the streak was over. But I was wrong – and somehow I managed another big all-time PB! 24:32 – 39 seconds off my 25:11 at Town Moor in early January. The course PB streak survives… 11 and counting now. We’ll see what happens next weekend.

Yesterday, though, I took a break from the running and volunteered at Jesmond Dene instead. Timekeeping for the first time in ages, which was nice – and thankfully the rain held off, unlike during the rest of this weekend!

Back to Town Moor next week.

The course PBs continue 🙂 My previous best at Rising Sun was 32:35 last July so I was fairly hopeful due to the way things have been going recently.

I started at the front with the fast laddies, which felt scary at the time but meant I avoided the usual bottleneck (it’s a wide start that quickly narrows). As has been the case for most parkruns recently, it turned into a bit of a progression run – I need to be brave enough to start faster. Or possibly do more of a warmup.

I finished in 26:02 – six and a half minutes off the course PB, which is not bad!

That’s 10 course PBs in a row! But the streak is absolutely not guaranteed to continue, as I’m back at Leazes this weekend. I was only there a week and a half ago and already did a fairly blistering time (for me), so we’ll have to see. I will give it a good go though.

Catching up with the last few parkrundays!

6th January saw me back at Town Moor, this time in shorts and fast shoes with my serious face on (the theme for this month’s parkruns). This was a successful strategy and helped me take over a minute off December’s all-time PB! New all-time PB 25:11.

Back to Jesmond Dene for the first time in a couple of months on 13th January. Pleased to take more than a minute off my course PB here as well – 27:26.

Finally, this last Saturday, I completed the set of Newcastle city parkruns with Leazes. Another week, another minute-plus off a course PB – 25:17! I was hoping in the latter stages it would be another all-time PB, but I couldn’t quite beat my Town Moor time from a couple of weeks previously. Soon I hope.

Assuming it’s on, I’m planning to do another local one this weekend. I’ve not visited in a while, and my course PB there is in the low 30s – so hopefully I’ll be able to take a decent chunk off that one too, even if I take it slightly easier this week (it’s a cutdown week on my marathon training plan so probably best to cool it a little!).

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.

That was quite a nice series of event numbers until Town Moor! I believe Leazes and Jesmond Dene are no longer in sync due to cancellations, but they’ll likely be similar in event number for a while yet.

I’ve got two months’ worth of parkrundays to catch up with as I haven’t had time to blog lately. I’ll try and keep it short-ish!

On the 14th of October I tailwalked around Jesmond Dene. Quite a fast field and if it hadn’t been for the parkwalkers I would probably have had to run!

I couldn’t parkrun on 21st October due to Storm Babet 🙁 I had a volunteer slot booked at Jesmond Dene but it was cancelled and we had a train to catch, and it was a bit too tight for me to get to any other run.

I was back at Jesmond Dene on 28th October. I managed my first ever Jesmond Dene sub-30 – 29:37! (And in Hallowe’en getup, too!)

I headed to Leazes on the 4th of November to try and get an all-time PB. I managed it – 26:24, which was 8 seconds faster than my previous best at Denton Dene in September.

Back at Jesmond Dene on 11th November. I was feeling slightly under the weather so I took it easy for 32:07.

Another run round the Dene on the 18th of November… but this time I gave it a go again and got my second fastest course time (29:44).

And back again on the 25th – this time for another big course PB, despite having an asthma attack on the way up the hill! (Need to remember to take my inhaler before parkrun.) New course PB 28:41!

This resulted in the very strange situation where my Jesmond Dene PB was 1 second faster than my Town Moor PB (28:42, set back in September 2018 – this was my all-time PB for nearly five years before I managed to break it at Agnew this August).

I wasn’t having that, so I resolved to do something about it at Town Moor the following week!

Unfortunately, the following week (2nd December), Town Moor was off. Along with pretty much the entirety of north-east England. 34 out of 36 parkruns in the region cancelled, leaving only Cotsford Fields and Marshall Drive as the two hardy coastal survivors down in Teesside. Much as I hate to miss parkrun, I wasn’t driving down there in the deep snow, so my next adventure would have to wait.

On the 9th of December, I headed to Town Moor, a week later than planned. No pacers unfortunately (they’re only in service on the first weekend of the month) and I wimped out of dressing for a PB attempt due to the cold, but I got a good start and I was overtaking friends who I knew were going for 26:45ish, so I thought I was probably on for a good time if I could just keep going.

I managed 26:23. A new all-time PB by 1 second, just beating my time at Leazes from a few weeks ago! And in tougher conditions on a tougher course 🙂

I have three more parkruns to do in 2023 (as I’m skipping the Christmas Day one for family time) – a course PB attempt this coming weekend, a let’s-see-what-happens on the 23rd, and then a maybe-just-maybe on a fast course on the 30th… so the year isn’t quite done yet. I’ll try and be a bit more prompt with my blog updates for those!

Catching up with the last couple of weeks.

On the 30th of September, Geth and I headed to Pendle as we were visiting my in-laws. I’d already taken about two and a half minutes off my Pendle PB this year when we last visited in July, so I wasn’t sure how much more I could improve – but I ended up taking another three-ish minutes off! 29:36 – and a few months ago I wasn’t even sure if I’d manage sub-30 anywhere this year, let alone on the toughest parkrun course I know.

This last Saturday, I did my second pacer stint at Town Moor, pacing 34 minutes again. I still haven’t quite got the hang of judging the finish straight exactly and came in at 34:08 by my watch (34:18 in results). I’ll give it another go in a couple of months!

A different event and a different volunteer role next week.

Bit of a midweek change of plan last week. Geth and I had originally planned to go to Leazes for a fast effort, but after both suffering from a cold during the week, we decided not to put ‘course PB pressure’ on ourselves and elected to try our NENDY at Denton Dene instead.

I was really pleased to get this one done. I’d been meaning to go all summer and hadn’t got round to it!

I decided to give it a good bash without looking at my watch. It turned out to be less hilly than people had been warning – IMO the sharp turns and narrow paths (made more difficult by the ‘keep right’ rule) are the truly tricky parts of this course.

I felt like I was going too fast when I started, but I decided to hang onto the pace and see where it got me. It got me a 29-second all-time parkrun PB – 26:32! Not bad considering it was a hillyish course, I was recovering from a cold and I was only wearing my second fastest shoes!

I was also 3rd lady, which I’m almost more pleased about than the PB. I know positions are all very dependent on who turns up on the day, and I try not to be competitive, but given that I spent my early parkrun years shuffling along accompanied by tailwalkers (tailrunners in those days), a podium finish is always going to be really special.

Back to bigger hills next week, so I’ll definitely have to wait a few weeks to try and be fast again!

I arrived at Town Moor for GNR t-shirt photo day with slightly different plans to the ones I’d made a week before. I’d originally hoped to push it a bit and get a baseline for where I was six days post-GNR. However, I’d developed a mild cold midweek and had needed a bit more recovery than expected, so I decided just to take it easy (accompanied by Geth, taking it even easier).

Nevertheless, easy/comfortable pace seemed to get faster and faster throughout the run, and I ended up doing my second fastest time of the year without ever pushing it! Not bad considering the circumstances (which included the worst mud I’ve ever seen at Town Moor – those paths are getting worse and worse and I was glad of my trail shoes).

Might try a bit harder next week if I’m over my cold by then!

Annual pre-GNR parkrun volunteering!

Jesmond Dene is a popular location for parkrun tourists due to the rarity of the ‘J’. It gets a fairly large proportion every week anyway, and on GNR weekend there are a LOT of parkrun tourists in town.

The normal attendance is about 180. This weekend we got 440, which smashed the attendance record by some considerable amount.

This meant that being on finish tokens was a bit of an adventure! We had 448 in the box so VERY nearly into the emergency printed paper ones – I was ready with the scissors at the end!

An amazing morning. A bit stressful for the volunteers at times but it all went off without a hitch and it was incredible to see so many people in the Dene – such a fantastic atmosphere for race weekend.

Back to Town Moor next week for the GNR t-shirt photo!