Crystal Palace parkrun

A trip to south London for me and Other Dan as we drove to Crystal Palace parkrun to go dinosaur hunting. We both used to visit the park in our much younger days to play in the park and roar at the model dinosaurs. I remember the 122 bus journey from Bexleyheath to Crystal Palace. The long, long journey on the 122 bus. All to run around the park and look at large model dinosaurs. Happy days.

There’s only a tiny car park for this one but there is plenty of free parking in the surrounding roads. We parked a few minutes jog from the park and joined the runners congregating near the start line. The first signs of Spring are here at last so short sleeved shirts for the first time in ages. The finish funnel is a bit further round the park so if you do have jackets etc then I recommend dropping them off at the finish and then heading back to the start line.

This is a two and a bit lapper and it’s net uphill but feels like it’s net down. Weird how we can slog around Roadshaw Downs parkrun, where it felt like it was all uphill, but then cruise round a course that’s a bit more up than down.

We were busy chatting our way round, looking out for the dinosaurs, and whirring the legs a little when we hit the lovely long down slope. No dinosaurs spotted on the first lap and then none spotted on the second lap either. Blimey!

The finish is off the path and onto a grass area (the rest of the course is all tarmac) and we dutifully queued to get our bar codes scanned.

The park map was consulted to find the dinosaurs (they’re around the lake, just near the start area behind some small buildings) so we went for a warm down jog around the lake.

One lesson learnt this week – always check the events social media pages. No problem for us this week but the run briefing included a warning that there was no run the following week due to another event in the park. Neither of us checked this week and it could have been embarrassing for us to arrive with no run to take part in.