Park Run

[JonM]

3 hours ago, tim2 said:

388 parkruns at 141 locations. Should reach 400 in January and 150 locations shortly afterwards, health permitting.

I'm also on 388, at rather fewer locations. You're a long way ahead on volunteering - my score there is only 60odd. 

[tim2]

1 hour ago, JonM said:

I'm also on 388, at rather fewer locations. You're a long way ahead on volunteering - my score there is only 60odd. 

I did a lot of volunteering in the early years, including Run Director 22 times. Now I mainly volunteer at junior parkrun. I do need to volunteer again soon, though.

[tim2]

Haigh Woodland parkrun in Wigan is a beast. 2.5K down followed by 2.5K up.

It was nice to go to a parkrun where 3 of the 4 conversations I overheard involved Rugby League and the Run Director was wearing a Wigan top.

[Charlie RL]

I've run and volunteered recently at The Plens newly set up @ Desborough.  Trail mainly with a wet 'bowl' - see Facebook. 

Also beat 2hrs for the half marathon this month with 1:59 and 59 seconds! 

[JonM]

10 hours ago, Charlie RL said:

Also beat 2hrs for the half marathon this month with 1:59 and 59 seconds! 

Nice.

(It's funny how these arbitrary distance in arbitrary amounts of time become targets for so many of us - any big marathon has loads more people finishing around the 3:59 mark than any other time.)

[tim2]

Recent health struggles meant I was clocking over 30 minutes and struggling to do so. Improving now and the last 3 parkruns at Mura di Lucca (Italy), Beacon (Lichfield) and Old Railway Trail (Llangollen,today) have been 28.32, 28.27 and 28.07 respectively. Getting there.

I am now on 397 parkruns at 148 events.  

[Copa]

In late June I finished just under 30 minutes and on Xmas day i finished in just over 23 minutes. I’m really happy with my progress and hope to get under 20 minutes in 2025.

I don’t have much time to train but a few small changes have helped a lot.

- I arrive 25 minutes early and do a proper warm up.

- I try to start in a position where I’m not stuck behind slower runners.

- mid week I do speed training on a treadmill. I run 17 minute pace (when I first did it it was 20 minute pace) for 2 minutes then rest for 2 minutes then rinse and repeat as much as i can up to 10 times. It’s really hard and I struggle to walk down stairs afterwards but it’s helped a lot. 

- casually run a 7km to 10km midweek.

- i also enjoy circuit training. Just running would bore me.

There are no doubt better ways to train to improve running speed but I don’t have much time and what I do fits in with my schedule.

Edited December 28, 2024 by Copa

[gingerjon]

10 hours ago, Copa said:

- I try to start in a position where I’m not stuck behind slower runners.

This tends to make the biggest difference to me. But it's getting quite hard to judge where to be as our numbers just seem to be going up and up. 510 on Christmas Day and 521 yesterday. That's up by 200 on Christmas Day last year.

[Copa]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

This tends to make the biggest difference to me. But it's getting quite hard to judge where to be as our numbers just seem to be going up and up. 510 on Christmas Day and 521 yesterday. That's up by 200 on Christmas Day last year.

One of my local parkruns has a built in crowd thinner early in the run. It’s an out and back course but 150m into the run it turns off the main path and goes steep downhill for 200 and then we have to turn at the end and run back up again before returning to the main path. The uphill section has plenty of space for overtaking. It’s not repeated on the way back. 

When the runners get back up the hill the crowd has thinned significantly and the narrow main path works well.

I did a large parkrun in Melbourne a while back and they explicitly stated that they had different start locations depending on how fast you run “line up at the front if sub 20, line up next to that eucalyptus tree if 20-24 minutes ….” It worked well and most people seemed to follow the instructions.

I wish all places were as well organised.

[Copa]

12 runs and 7 volunteer credits this year. Looking forward to a busier 2025 starting with the New Year’s Day run tomorrow morning.

[JonM]

Looks like every parkrun within about a 90 minute drive of home is cancelled tomorrow.  Saves me digging my car out of the snow to go and volunteer I suppose.

[tim2]

21 minutes ago, JonM said:

Looks like every parkrun within about a 90 minute drive of home is cancelled tomorrow.  Saves me digging my car out of the snow to go and volunteer I suppose.

Yeah, I took an early decision this morning to cancel my attempt at parkrun 399.

[gingerjon]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

Yeah, I took an early decision this morning to cancel my attempt at parkrun 399.

Here on the sunshine coast, we need one extra volunteer to do a course walk tomorrow morning but I'd be surprised if there's any issues. It's been above freezing in Hastings all day and we didn't get snow here. Looks like being brass monkeys at 9am tomorrow though.

[gingerjon]

19 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Here on the sunshine coast, we need one extra volunteer to do a course walk tomorrow morning but I'd be surprised if there's any issues. It's been above freezing in Hastings all day and we didn't get snow here. Looks like being brass monkeys at 9am tomorrow though.

-1 at kick off and a bit skiddy underfoot but not too bad, considering.

[JonM]

We were on holiday in Sicily recently and did parkrun on Etna. Their old course was round an old volcanic crater, but it became dangerous (forest fires rather than lava or volcanic type stuff) and they've moved to doing a few laps in the pine forest at the bottom of the crater. Still amazing views though.

Very different from the usual experience - less than 30 people and about half were foreign tourists. We all had to sign our name in the visitors books and pose for lots of photos. After the Italian briefing, there was a short English briefing given by a local whose English husband had proposed to her at Etna parkrun the year before. It was the run director's 73rd birthday and this was celebrated with what looked like a complete shopload of pastries and desserts and several bottles of prosecco, plus multiple speeches and several different songs.

Other tourists included Wests Tigers fans (living in Brisbane) doing a tour of Europe and a couple doing a 'parkrun islands' tour (like Inis Meáin one of the Aran Islands, Bressay on Shetland etc). Presumably by that logic you could do any parkrun in Great Britain or Ireland too.

[Copa]

After a month off because of injury i returned to parkrun. I’ve started on a different parkrun with roughly 100m in elevation change. The hills are all short, steep and hard to run up… they are fun to run down though.