We returned to our home parkrun at Gunnersbury Park for the first time in several weeks as The Son decided to undertake a 7km sponsored run in aid of Comic Relief. He had the bright idea of making it 7km because parkrun is 5km and there would be no challenge in just completing his normal Saturday morning timed run. I had some other silent expletive laden opinions on this choice once it became clear that the parkrun weather fairies were on strike and the cold rain swirled around the windswept park.
Dan had joined us again this week via a quick stop at Hanger Lane and he went off for a warm-up as I sheltered next to The Son for the run briefing. Numbers were down this week (wise choice!) so 127 crazy brave souls lined up at the start and were soon running down through the mud on the grass slope.
I was asked by The Son to run with him this week due to the inclement weather, which also worked well for me as I am running the Reading Half Marathon on Sunday. We chatted away together as we jogged around the park until we reached the finishing straight where Dan was jogging down towards us in a bid to stay warm after finishing way before us. The Son took this as an opportunity to run ahead and take down the person in front while Dan jogged up to the funnel with me, being careful not to cross the finish for a second time.
The Son was starting to waver on running the extra 2km but I told him that he had made a commitment to help out people less fortunate and running for another 12 or so minutes in the rain was not a real hardship. We scanned our barcodes, wrapped up in our coats and the three of us carried on jogging up past the car park and then in a long circular route to the café.
The lower turnout of runners meant that the café was mostly empty so no queue to get our hot chocolates and I rewarded my effort with a bacon bap. Our thanks go out to the volunteers for giving up their time in the freezing rain to make sure that parkrun took place once again.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:30:21
- Garmin time: 0:30:21
- Finish position: 95 / 127
- Gender position: 65 / 73
- Age category: SM35-39
- Age grade: 44.65 %
The Son parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:30:06
- Garmin time: not taken
- Finish position: 93 / 127
- Gender position: 63 / 73
- Age category: JM14
- Age grade: 50.83 %
