I was excited about today’s parkrun because, for the very first time, I was volunteering as tailwalker (the back marker who walks behind the last participant and makes sure everyone gets through the finish before the parkrun gets packed away). It was fun, although the weather was not exactly ideal for being out on the course for nearly an hour!
Pre-parkrun. We were only about 45% soaked at this point.
It was an absolutely sodden morning and it just kept getting heavier! This was the second wet parkrunday since the restart and both times I was volunteering at Jesmond Dene… hope this doesn’t become a trend! I’m marshalling there again in three weeks’ time so I will keep you informed.
Back to regular running next week, plus another attempt at a new-to-me volunteer role 🙂
It was so exciting to be in Scotland for the Scottish parkrun restart this morning! Girvan Prom had been on my bucket list for a long time (I love seaside parkruns) and it did not disappoint, despite the cold wind and tough grassy section. I’m still pretty slow at the moment due to various issues around marathon training, but I still managed my fastest time since the English restart a few weeks ago, so I’m very happy!
They also gave out free tablet at the end to celebrate 😍
Two very happy parkrunners with their complimentary tablet! Photo (c) John Cooke 2021.
The first of many parkruns to tick off in this area of Scotland, I hope! Planning on visiting a lot in the future…
Back running again this week. It’s amazing how, on only week three of the return, parkrun has started to feel ‘normal’ again.
No photographer at parkrun today so I took a slightly dodgy and unflattering selfie as we were leaving instead. Part of my mission to collect a photo from every parkrunday going forward!
Next week we will be visiting a parkrun we have not done before, which is very exciting. Still deciding which one though!
I haven’t forgotten about all my parallel universe games, I promise! I’m just moving them to a different day of the week on the blog, as Saturdays are now ‘parkrundays’ again and so I’m spending the afternoons playing with stats and spreadsheets rather than playing with game code.
Today was the second parkrunday back in England after the hiatus. I had made sure to get my volunteering slot booked at Jesmond Dene, which I now consider to be one of my twin home parkruns alongside Town Moor.
At my marshal point (before the rain started). I like the colour of the new pink hi-viz vests that are now standard for parkrun volunteers, but I’m not really a fan in practical terms – they’re nowhere near as visible as the old yellow versions.
I love the surroundings of Jesmond Dene – it’s a beautiful place. However, it’s a very tough and hilly course, so in some ways I prefer volunteering there to running it! (I will run it again soon though.) Geth ran the course this morning and has decided to make it his monthly hill training session when I’m doing my monthly volunteering stint!
It is really lovely having parkrun back in England. It has felt so easy to slip back into it – like it’s never been away – but I know I will never take it for granted again, like so many other things. I’m crossing everything that Scotland and Wales will follow soon (there are so many I want to do in Scotland!).
It was AMAZING to be back at parkrun today, flying in a different way (at least for the last 800 metres – the preceding 4.2k was a bit of a plod). Having a slow Saturday now. More games from the parallel universe next week!
The best thing about races and parkruns is the incentive to speed up a bit towards the end. Photo by Mark Slade for Town Moor parkrun.
It’s been another busy week at work and I’m really glad it’s the weekend. Geth and I are going to parkrun tomorrow morning! It’s finally back in England for the first time since that strange weekend in March 2020, and I’m very excited to return. Our home parkrun has a new name (formerly Newcastle, now Town Moor due to several other parkruns now existing in Newcastle) and a new course and a mostly-new core team running it, so it’s a bit of a new era all round. It feels very strange that we can finally parkrun again after so many false starts, but it feels like the right time. I hope Scotland and Wales aren’t too far behind.
Other than that I’m going to be chilling out with videogames this weekend, both creating and playing. I have returned to Final Fantasy I this week so I’ll be spending some time with that! I’ve also still got a lot of ParserComp entries to get through before the voting deadline next weekend, and I’m really excited to get some coding done as well.
The weather is still hot and not conducive to long runs. I’ve moved my long run day to Thursday, both because of events happening later in the training programme (to be precise, due to COVID-induced race lag, the rescheduled GNR falls precisely three weeks before the rescheduled-rescheduled London Marathon, and in a marathon training programme you’re supposed to do your 22-miler three weeks before marathon day, and I’m not doing an extra nine miles before or after the GNR! …so I’ll do it on the Thursday and have a gentle plod round the dodgily-rerouted ‘GNR’ three days later, no racing it) and because mental health wise I need FULL WEEKENDS at the moment that are not completely taken up with running, so it’s best to squeeze the long run in on a weekday instead. My last two long runs have ended up being cut short due to heatwave collapse, so next week I’m going to grit my teeth and attempt an out-and-back in the hope that, by the time I’m struggling, I’ll already be ‘on my way home’ and so it’ll be mentally easier.
Lots of groups and classes from pre-pandemic life now inviting me back, but as I’ve always said, these things will need to happen very gradually for me as I don’t want to jump straight back into Constantly Doing Stuff. Ignoring the FOMO and doing my own thing for a while longer.
My favourite tree in the garden. It looks great in the summer.
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Yuna’s Theme’ Crowded House – ‘Weather With You’ Don Henley – ‘Boys Of Summer’ Duran Duran – ‘Give It All Up’
Sunday
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Cosmo Canyon’
Monday
Paul Weller – ‘You Do Something To Me’
Tuesday
Calvin Harris – ‘Summer’
And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘To Zanarkand’
Wednesday
Therion – ‘Summer Night City’ Duran Duran – ‘To The Shore’
Thursday
Boston – ‘More Than A Feeling’ Levellers – ‘The Fear’ Duran Duran – ‘Shadows On Your Side’
Geth and I were in Inverness on the first weekend of March for the Inverness Half Marathon. It was our second year running the race, and last year the Saturday was a bit hectic (we got the train up on the Saturday and due to rail issues didn’t arrive in Inverness until very late at night). This year, I wanted a much more relaxed Saturday before the race, so we spent a couple of days driving up (staying in Edinburgh en route) and arrived in Inverness on the Friday night, in time to attend Inverness parkrun for a shakeout on the Saturday morning.
I’d been worriedly following the Inverness parkrun social media pages for the previous few weeks, as the bad winter weather had meant that they’d been cancelling every week. Inverness has two different courses – the primary course in Bught Park and the backup course in Whin Park – and thankfully the weather leading up to the half marathon weekend stayed dry enough that they were able to use the Whin Park course. We were on for Geth’s 100th parkrun!
Post-run selfie with that poor collapsed pop-up sign! I think Inverness maybe need to order a new one from HQ…
The Whin Park course is three and a half laps of a pleasant park with a nice lake. There was a section that was a bit difficult and muddy due to recent flooding, but other than that it was fairly secure underfoot. Geth and I jogged round together at a fairly leisurely pace, saving our legs for the following day, and it was a really nice run.
Post-run and post-return-to-hotel-for-showers, we headed into town for cake. There’s got to be cake on a milestone parkrun day!
Milestone cake! Geth managed to squeeze in his 100th parkrun before lockdown started – he’s been on 100 ever since!
I don’t know when I’ll be back in Inverness, but I’d be happy to do this parkrun again!
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.
Pop-up sign (love these) at South Shields parkrun.
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 🙂
I continued my parkrun tourism around north-east England in February with Gibside parkrun, which takes place at Gibside National Trust in the northernmost area of County Durham. It wasn’t that far to drive, but the turnoff is easy to miss!
Volunteers at the finish line of Gibside parkrun.
Gibside is a very pretty course, but it’s the opposite of flat. The hills are fairly brutal for most of the way round, and I think I was about seven or eight minutes slower than my PB. It does have a nice finishing straight though, and the paths are nice and wide all the way round, meaning that there’s no congestion – especially as it’s a fairly rural parkrun and thus doesn’t have a huge attendance.
I found it to be a bit of a theme over the winter that I ended up doing tough, traily, muddy parkruns that would probably have been more enjoyable during the summer months. Gibside wasn’t overly muddy, but it was scenic, and I think that scenery probably looks a bit nicer now that leaves exist again. Sadly, I likely won’t be able to test this theory until 2021, as I reckon parkrun won’t be back until then. Maybe by then I’ll have forgotten the hills and be willing to give Gibside parkrun another go!
