My grand plan to seek out another new parkrun this week fell at the first hurdle. I couldn’t be arsed to visit the parkrun UK events list. No inaugurals within reach but I know that Crane Park parkrun, Bedfont Lakes parkrun and Kingston parkrun are all reasonably close by (let alone the hundreds of other events around the UK!). So Friday night rolled into sight with The Son playing at his friend’s house, Mrs Dan out with a friend for dinner and me at home gorging on pizza. It was left to Other Dan dropping me a message to agree that Northala Fields parkrun would be our destination again because we could stay in bed longer (not together I might add).
The Son wasn’t getting out of bed after arriving home late from his friends house so it was left to me to fly the parkrun flag this week. I met Other Dan during my warm up jog and we convened at the start line before being set off running with the rest of the field. The ‘pizza from the night before’ was playing silly buggers with my stomach, which meant that I wasn’t really in the best condition to beat my course PB. I began to gradually slow around the 2km mark and a series of runners began to serenely pass by. I don’t eat pizza very often, I do not like it that much and I knew that it plays havoc with my stomach… so I am a muppet.
I joined Other Dan at the finish (he’s back in good form now, well ahead of my overall parkrun PB but still a minute or so slower than his PB) and we settled ourselves on the café veranda to watch the remaining finishers arrive. I’m really starting to fall for Northala Fields parkrun (although the café scrambled egg on toast is not as nice as Gunnersbury) thanks to a fast course, lovely outside café seating area and a friendly core team.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:23:33
- Garmin time: 0:23:34
- Finish position: 22 / 101
- Gender position: 19 /’ 53
- Age category: VM40-44
- Age grade: 57.96 %
