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Back outside the M25 to visit the inaugural Horsham parkrun. This one was on the tipping point of our somewhat stretched rule of attending any parkrun that’s drivable in 60 minutes or less. Still, it was a great morning out and I put my foot down this week and ran under 24 minutes for the first time in ages. Other Dan decided to put his fitness to the test and went speeding off so I followed suit (kind of) and didn’t pootle round as per usual.
I was aiming to park in the Superbowl car park but that was full by the time we arrived. However, there is plenty of car parking dotted around the edge of the park in various little car parks. There looked to be plenty of facilities available in the park; cycle parking, food & drink outlets, sports pitches, and a skate park to name just a few. The crowds were forming for the first Horsham parkrun so we went off for a warm-up before joining everyone on the start line.
The course consists of 3 anti-clockwise laps of the park on grass and tarmac paths. The park is heavily used with several football matches taking place and plenty of dog walkers around. I managed to just get lapped as I approached the start of my final lap by the super speedy first finisher. A sub-16 minute finish time was hugely impressive given the damp conditions, some twisty grass sections, and the crowds of inaugural runners.
Unfortunately I had to be back home to meet the family so we weren’t able to join the other tourists and local runners in the café afterwards.
Running Dan parkrun result:
- parkrun time: 0:23:59
- Garmin time: 0:23:58
- Finish position: 90 / 366
- Gender position: 86 /209
- Age category: VM40-44
- Age grade: 56.91 %
