Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 5th July 2025 I ran the Battersea parkrun which was the 33rd event held at the venue, my 243rd parkrun and 161st different course I'd attended. When Battersea parkrun was announced I was grateful, a new parkrun event in easy commutable distance for me to visit and to tick off one of my lower event numbers i'd not yet visited. So for 32 weeks I had to wait patiently for my turn to visit was an immediately popular event. I remember reading about Battersea on Facebook groups, firstly why there wasn't a parkrun in Battersea park and then eventually the campaign and public consultation in order to organise one. Battersea is home to a multitude of running and other events so to not be home to a parkrun event for a long time seemed to be unusual. But where there is a well there is evidently always a way. My challenge this week, rather rarely in recent times was how to get there. Aside from a few events in London I've tended to drive in rather than use public transport....

On the 28th June 2025 I ran the Tooting Common parkrun which was the 412th event held at the venue, my 242nd parkrun and 160th different course I'd attended. Last August I made my way around the South Circular looking to reach Tooting Common to take part in their Saturday morning parkrun. But traffic was so bad due to an overturned car that I had to divert at the last minute and headed to Brockwell parkrun instead. A little under a year later I nervously head around the South Circular again in a second attempt to reach the venue. My paranoid state of mind even put extra contingency time on the travel to cover all eventualities. Which is how I found myself parked up at the Dr Johnson Avenue car park at 8am feeling a mixture of relief and foolishness. Lightening hadn't struck twice and all my panicking hadn't come to anything. After completing my daily Wordle and Sudoku and killing the 30 minutes extra time off on my phone I got out to explore the park. Tooting Bec Common is...

On the 21st June 2025 I ran the Brighton & Hove parkrun which was the 855th event held at the venue, my 241st parkrun and 159th different course I'd attended. parkrun first started in Bushy way back in 2004 before slowly evolving into the worldwide Saturday phenomenon that it is now. It was originally called the Bushy time trial and before the rebrand to parkrun there were ten time trial events spread over the United Kingdom, with Brighton & Hove being one of them. Naturally there is a challenge within the tourist community to tick them all off and after my visit on Saturday I'd visited exactly half of them. It was also my third visit to the city to take part in parkrun after already running at the Hove Promenade and Bevendean Down events. There are two more events left to visit at East Brighton and Preston Park and I've completed the set. My last visit was last January at Hove Promenade on what was quite possibly the coldest parkrun event I'd ever taken part i...

On the 14th June 2025 I ran the Wisbech parkrun which was the 92nd event held at the venue, my 240th parkrun and 158th different course I'd attended. Catton parkrun in Norwich, according to Google maps is a 2 hour and 15 minutes drive away from my house. According to my 5k planning app this is the 150th closest event to where I live. The question is therefore how far is acceptable to travel just to partake in a free Saturday morning 5k run, considering the abundance of choices within my own local area? My justification for visiting Wisbech for parkrun was a flimsy one. To my knowledge the event wasn't likely to be one of those spectacular events that every parlrunner needs to visit. But it was celebrating it's 92nd event and I needed to visit a parkrun with that event number, particularly if I wanted to achieve my goal of eventually raising my Wilson Index up to 100. If I was feeling slightly guilty for the unnecessary stretch of my carbon footprint, fate had its own way o...

On the 6th June 2025 I ran the Hazelwood parkrun which was the 282nd event held at the venue, my 239th parkrun and 157th different course I'd attended. The beauty of parkrun tourism is the variety and the imbalance of expectations Vs reality. With over 2,000 parkruns across the world the variety part is easy to understand, but the expectation Vs reality element is far more nuances. Without YouTube or social media photography the only way of knowing what a parkrun course might be like is by reading the description on the course website. Some descriptions are reasonably detailed whilst others are brief, even a single line in some cases.  'An out and back route along the nation cycle route as far as the red postbox and back' course descriptions can be that simple and so as someone who is about to visit you don't know the running surface, the terrain, whether it's flat or hilly or somewhere in-between. So you're left to your own imagination as to what to expect. An...

On the 31st May 2025 I ran the Reigate Priory parkrun which was the 513rd event held at the venue, my 238th parkrun and 156th different course I'd attended. In preparation for a parkrun I ensure that I do my research beforehand. What's the course like, where to park, how popular is it, all the standard things. But sometimes knowing too much can be counter-productive. Reigate Priory parkrun is a great example of knowing too much before you go. I knew that it was hilly and as a result I'd let it get into my head and had convinced myself long before I had actual arrived at the park on Saturday morning that I wasn't going to complete the event and that the hills were actually going to kill me.  Upon arrival on the Saturday morning I was blessed with a beautiful sunny summer's morning with high temperatures and little wind. The sun always makes everything look that much pleasant and the surroundings at Reigate Priory were very much that and more. Based in the centre of ...