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

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.
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