Valentines parkrun (63)

· by · in Greater London, United Kingdom. ·

This weekend I headed to the capital to visit the Olympic Park for the first time since I first watched athletics live at the 2012 Olympic Games to see the London Anniversary Games and decided to make a weekend of it, which of course also meant my first London parkrun. With it being a busy weekend in London though due to the Pride Parade, a U2 concert and of course the athletics (I’m sure along with many other things), decently priced hotels in the centre were not quite so easy to come across and as a result we ended up staying further out of the city.

The good thing with parkrun in the UK though (and especially London) is that no matter where you stay, you can normally find a parkrun fairly close-by and this weekend it happened that I was staying within walking distance of Valentines parkrun in Ilford.

Despite all that I had heard about the area and the bad reputation that the area seems to have, the sense of community in the park was probably more than I have experienced anywhere else, not just in my travels with parkrun but probably my travels full stop, and after various recent political and social changes in the world it was invigorating to see and be even a small part of it. It was buoyed I’m sure by Wimbledon being on TV and England playing test cricket at the moment too, but even when I arrived at 8:20am the park was full of runners, walkers, dog-walkers, people playing cricket and tennis and much more. There was undoubtedly an electricity and a buzz about the place. This also transferred into the runners and volunteers at parkrun to make the whole event uplifting. This is what parkrun is about, pure and simple!

Don’t know if it was this feeling of electricity, or if it was the times in the last couple of weeks giving me a perhaps false sense of my form at the moment, but I found myself heading out pretty hot with an average pace of approx 4:40/km for the first couple of kilometres. I was feeling good and worked out that if I carried on at that pace or just under that pace I would be on course for a second PB in as many weeks, but then as I neared my third kilometre my back started giving me an all too familiar ache and I had to drop off significantly, dropping to an almost walk at about the 3.75km mark. I was still doing the calculations in my head and I had gone from approx 23:15, to 23:45, down past 24:00 and nearing 25:00 again. 25:00 long used to be my goal that I would consider as being a good day in the office but this morning it felt like failure, like I had been found out and that my form over the last couple of weeks was a lie. With that feeling fresh in my mind I picked myself up and wrestled over the final 1.5km picking up my speed and managing to finish with a sprint. From nowhere I had managed to recover back to a sub-25 minute run and this one felt like victory. Not only that, but it was the first time ever that I had gone sub-25 minutes at 3 consecutive parkruns!

COURSE DETAILS:

Valentines parkrun (63)

As with my run a few months ago at Southampton, this course is a two-lapper with an offshoot for the Start/Finish line added to the start and end to make it up to distance.

The Start/Finish line is just past the bandstand near to the cafe at the centre of the park alongside the boating lake. From the Start you head with the boating lake on your left hand side until you reach the end of the path after approx 250m. You then take a left turn, again with the lake on your left hand side to follow the path towards the edge of the park. After another 200m you take another left to take the path at the edge of the park and keep going until you reach an access road for the park. Turn left again at the access road before taking a right and then a left turn at the 1km mark. 200m further down that path you run through a small windy section and take a small wooden bridge to run with the fish pond alongside on the right before taking a left turn around the edge of the park. You then follow the path round to the left again before it opens up with the tennis courts on your right. At the end of the tennis courts you take a right turn to follow the path around the edge of the park and head back towards the boating lake for the second lap.

Upon reaching the pavilion house at the end of the boating lake for a second time, you take a left turn to now have the boating lake on your right through to the Finish line.

RUN DETAILS:

  • Time: 24:48
  • Place: 39/232
  • Gender Place: 34
  • Age Category Place (SM30-34): 4
  • Age Graded Score: 52.28%

LINKS:

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