Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 24th May 2025 I ran the Hanworth parkrun which was the 232nd event held at the venue, my 237th parkrun and 155th different course I'd attended. Last week I missed parkrun for non-holiday reasons for the first time since the spring of 2022. I'd had a long great innings but sometimes life is more important and unexpected things take precedent. Stephanie has been suffering from some form of discomfort after eating for several months and had a second serious issue where the pain she experienced caused her to faint and lose consciousness. When it happens late at night in the ensuite bathroom it becomes a rather scary and traumatic experience, with paramedics called to the house and a visit to the A&E department necessary. It was a long and tiring night, with no real explanation from the Dr before we were sent back home again. But after a night spent awake and in discomfort I didn't have the energy or the will to traipse across the Dartford Crossing again to tick off ...

On the 10th May 2025 I ran the Beckenham Place parkrun which was the 374th event held at the venue, my 236th parkrun and 154th different course I'd attended. It was also an event with a fair few surprises. Normally I'll have seen a video of some description of the parkrun course and had a fair sense of what the course might look like, at least in a 2D kind of way. But for some reason YouTube didn't seem to have much in the way of Beckenham Place parkrun videos and that suggested to me that the event doesn't have much to shout about. What I did know however was that the event was operating a different version of their standard point-to-point course and has been for over a year. Works to the pathways in the park had meant much of the course was unavailable and so they adapted by operating a two-lap version of their course instead. Which all in all led me to not having much in the way of expectations prior to this event. I was joined once again by Mark, who asked me what ...

On the 3rd May 2025 I ran the Isabel Trail parkrun which was the 231st event held at the venue, my 235th parkrun and 153rd different course I'd attended. parkrun rules state that children under 11 years old need to be accompanied by and adults within arms length. Which is fine and all fair enough. But what happens when you have two 10 year olds that are on complete opposite end of the athletic spectrum? Back in August I took Hayden's best friend Henry with us to Morecambe where alongside the football he completed his first parkrun. On dropping Hayden off at school a couple of weeks ago Henry came up to me and asked if he could come with me and Hayden on our next away day. I agreed, but one of the conditions was he needed to join in on Saturday morning at 9am for our standard 5k walk, jog or run.  Initially I had planned to book a Premier Inn in Stoke-on-Trent and run Hanley parkrun, but the local Premier Inn prices had gone through the roof on what I suspect to be celebrating ...

On the 26th April 2025 I ran the Morden parkrun which was the 40th event held at the venue, my 234th parkrun and 152nd different course I'd attended. Just when you think you are edging ever closer to LonDone status another parkrun pops up and the goalpost move ever wider apart, making it even harder to obtain that elusive crown. However, it does have benefits in that a closer event to home makes easier options for filling up the Wilson Index - parkrun snakes and ladders! 9 months or so ago Morden parkrun became the latest event to join the roster and I marked it down as a possible venue on my calendar. But for one reason or another it kept getting pushed back until eventually the stars aligned and I made to event number 40. By completing the event I leave just event number 33 remaining all the way up to 58, with gaps at 59, 62 and 65. The gaps become a little more frequent after that but the goal is to eventually complete 1-100 which is one of the harder 'achievements' to ...

On the 19th April 2025 I ran the Quakers Walk parkrun which was the 75th event held at the venue, my 233rd parkrun and 151st different course I'd attended. I have got a rather long list of planned events in an excel spreadsheet that is loosely put together with some form of logic, but heavily caveated that things are likely to change. For example I can't really put plans in place now for August and September until the football fixtures are released at the end of June. But they are there anyway waiting for me to adjust when the time comes Planning out this way does occasionally create some unexpected opportunities. I had worked out that Gillingham weren't playing on Saturday as it was Easter, so I planned to visit Quakers Walk parkrun with the idea of possibly making a family day of it with Steph and the kids. It would mean an early start, but we'd done it previously and had a good day out afterwards. But I hadn't quite considered Gillingham playing the day before a...

On the 12th April 2025 I ran the Gladstone parkrun which was the 601st event held at the venue, my 232nd parkrun and 150th different course I'd attended. In social media groups discussing parkrun adventures there's frequently tales of parkrunners who have bumped into someone famous on their weekly timed walk, jog or run. 'Famous' can mean lots of different things these days and so those celebrities can range from anyone, like Paul Sinton-Hewitt, the founder of parkrun to Joe Wilkinson the comedian, Gillingham FC fan and occasional parkrun participant. I even ran an event once where Dame Kelly Holmes was present and hadn't even realised until I'd read about it later on social media. So you can forgive me for feeling a little excited when I arrived at Gladstone parkrun and immediately spotted Olympic legend Ellie Simmons! She was attending her first parkrun event as an ambassador of parkrun to help further promote the parkwalk initiative which aims to encourage f...