I was planning on walking the ‘usual’ Kingsbury parkrun today but decided, last night, to play away at a different parkrun. The next nearest, unvisited, parkrun is Sutton Park.
Luckily, the cold symptoms had lessened so I decided to chance a stroll around the park.
Reading the instructions about parking on the Sutton Parkrun site (LINK) I noticed that the Banners Gate car park fills up quickly. So I arrived an hour before the start.
As a warm up, I took a three mile plus walk around the park, roughly following the parkrun route arriving back at the start with ten minutes or so to wait.
I stayed towards the back so as not to get in the way of the runners and at the allotted time set off.
I noticed a group of about a dozen or so walkers, just off the path, set off at the same time but I’m not sure whether they were doing the parkrun or not.
I soon settled into my stride passing the first kilometre marked with it’s smiley face before turning right along Lord Donegals Ride.
After finishing the first mile, I was at the foot of the ‘Hill of Doom’. The short but steep ascent was ascended, passing a few walking runners on the way.
To be honest, I haven’t visited too many parkruns but this route is one of the hilliest that I’ve done (Glasgow, if memory serves me right, was quite ‘undulating’).
A trail was followed from the top of the hill to the Jamboree Stone which was placed to commemorate the 1957 assembly of fifty two thousand scouts. That’s a lot of woggles !!!
A short out and back section was completed (sadistically down hill and then back up). A tarmac road was followed for a while before cutting across a field and a final road section to the finish.
Approaching the finish, I glanced at my watch and noticed that I had only covered two point nine something miles. As I crossed the finish, my watch had the distance travelled as 2.96 instead of the expected 3.1 ! I asked one of the volunteers managing the funnel is anyone else had mentioned that the course was short and was told that a few had !!!
My time for the course (2.96 or 3.1) was 37:35 – an average pace of 12:43 per mile or nearly 5 mph.
I got my bar codes scanned, found the car and was on my way home.
Mid afternoon, I received a text from parkrun …
Evening
To complete my training mileage for the day, I did the Ham Hall loop this evening. A steady walk whilst listening to the last few episodes of Tracks on the iPlayer (or BBC Sounds as it is now known).Nothing out of the ordinary to report.
16.7 miles for today bringing the yearly total up to 138 miles meaning that I can colour in Surrey.
An easy eight miles on the cards for tomorrow.