Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 17th December 2022 I ran the Margate parkrun which was the 439th event held at the venue, my 107th parkrun and 41st different course I'd attended. Multiple events had been called off around the country in the days leading up to the weekend, and as I lay in bed on Friday night refreshing the Margate parkruns facebook page for news I was secretly hoping for a cancellation too. I'd been feeling rough all weekend and I had a sneezing, coughing Stephanie lying next to me who had gone through the same dramas. But schedules are schedules and as part of the plan I was due to complete the Kent parkrun set at Margate which ordinarily I could have shifted. However, I had volunteered to mark the occasion by writing the run report for the events website and didn't want to let anyone down by not attending. So after a final check on the morning of the event for further news on facebook, I ventured out at minus something degrees and de-iced the car with a cough and sniffle and wond...

On the 10th December 2022 I ran the Tonbridge parkrun which was the 391st event held at the venue, my 106th parkrun and 40th different course I'd attended. Last week at Whitstable was the moment where it felt like the seasons had changed. Out had gone the autumn and winter had taken it's place. Yesterday morning we woke up to thick frost and icy conditions, winter had certainly arrived alright. But was parkrun going to survive the conditions? That was the million dollar question. I'd not been affected by cancellations before, as in the sense that ordinarily if an event was called off, I'd shrug and stay at home in bed. But as a new tourist devotee with plans and schedules cancellation can cause allsorts of replanning conundrums. It is of course part of the game and one shouldn't expect too much of events, particularly as safety is paramount. Winter becomes a game of roulette and so far it seems, so good. No pre-planned cancellation at Tonbridge and no updates via ...

On the 3rd December 2022 I ran the Whitstable parkrun which was the 571st event held at the venue, my 105th parkrun and 39th different course I'd attended. For some bizarre, masochistic reason I cannot understand I've wanted to run a parkrun on the seafront with big wind, dramatic waves and plummeting temperatures. It sounds romantic to me, madness to others, but is the reason why I had two coastal events planned for December. First up? Whitstable! Up until very recently, I had never been to Whitstable which I found strange considering in forty plus years as Kentish man I'd been to virtually every other seaside resort in Kent and arguably Whitstable is one of the finest and most popular of all. Nevertheless, I found myself driving down Thanet Way a little over a month from my first ever visit with the weather very different than before. Upon arrival at Marine Parade, the road that runs along the top of Tankerton beach, separated by Tankerton slopes I was comforted by the w...

On the 26th November 2022 I ran the Royal Tunbridge Wells parkrun which was the 359th event held at the venue, my 104th parkrun and 38th different course I'd attended. As Tonbridge parkrun was called off again for the second week in a row due to localised flooding I was able to regig my planner once more, opting instead to run at Tonbridge's near neighbour - Royal Tunbridge Wells. I had originally planned to run here a few weeks back but issues with my foot and a gout diagnosis put pay to that, but I'd been looking forward to this one, not just for ticking off another Kent parkrun venue but to finally tick off 'R' from the parkrun Alphabet. The event is one of those that are fairly well covered on social media with YouTube videos of the course so I had a pretty good sense of what to expect. I'd also been to Dunorlan Park as a child and could remember it for its beauty. It's located on a valley with a lake at the bottom, there are formal garden areas, a play...

On the 19th November 2022 I ran the Canterbury parkrun which was the 381st event held at the venue, my 103rd parkrun and 37th different course I'd attended. I was torn this week between Tonbridge and Canterbury, both of which I'd scheduled this week and next, but elected to head towards Canterbury  on account of its further distance from home. Next Friday we are in London for Mums 60th birthday celebrations so didn't want an extra early start after a late night before. It worked out well in the end as Tonbridge was eventually cancelled due to flooding on the course after some significant rainfall this week here in Kent. It was still rather wet and miserable on Saturday morning and the temperature had notably decreased too. I wasn't really sure what to expect with Canterbury as like Bedgebury the week before information online was quite hard to come by. There were whispers of a challenge on the course and the word 'hill' had been mentioned once or twice so it p...

On the 12th November 2022 I ran the Bedgebury Pinetum parkrun which was the 271st event held at the venue, my 102nd parkrun and 36th different course I'd attended. After my last parkrun at Charlton on the 29th October, I sat at home watching football on the television and at the full time whistle got up to get a snack from the kitchen. My foot which had caused me some issues in the days leading up to the event was now swollen and almost impossible to walk on. I spent most of the following day waiting to see someone in A&E where a GP diagnosed me with gout and prescribed me with a dose of antibiotics. I spent the next week having multiple conversations with people about my age, my diet and my alcohol intake and firmly defended all three. It also meant that any running activity was out of the question. My goal of running 50 parkrun events in a calendar year was over and my planned parkrun schedule had to be rewritten. It also meant that I could volunteer at my local Cyclopark e...

On the 29th October 2022 I ran the Charlton parkrun which was the 55th event held at the venue, my 101st parkrun and 35th different course I'd attended. In and around trying to get the parkrun venues in Kent ticked off, I've been simultaneously trying to work my way through my local parkruns that I've not done yet, in particular those that sit either side of the A2 corridor. One of those such runs is Charlton, which I planned to run to coincide with event number 55, which is one of the remaining Fibonacci sequence numbers I am still yet to do. Prior to the run, on the Thursday night watching the climax of the latest Stranger Things series on Netflix I was stretching my feet out and felt a bit of a twinge in the big toe of my right foot. I didn't think anything of it, until the next morning when walking down the stairs was a lot more painful than it should have been. As I was off work on a days leave and had planned to visit Whitstable for a stroll along the coastal pat...

On the 22nd October 2022 I ran the Bushy parkrun which was the 899th event held at the venue, my 100th parkrun and 34th different course I'd attended. Not to be confused with the town in Hertfordshire, Bushy park lies in South West London - a stones throw away from Hampton Court Palace. It is in fact a Royal Park, one of eight in London and is the second largest of them all. It's famous for its herds of red and fallow deer which roam freely across the park itself. In 2004 a man named Paul Sinton-Hewitt arranged a 5k running event at the park between running friends that was known as the Bushy Time Trial. The event was then replicated at Wimbledon Common three years later and further Time Trials soon followed. These events were then renamed to parkrun and a global initiative was born. As it was my 100th parkrun, what better way to celebrate my centenary than a pilgrimage to the place where it all started? Knowing that it was my 100th event and the next official parkrun mileston...

On the 15th October 2022 I walked the Cyclopark parkrun which was the 100th event held at the venue and my 99th parkrun event overall. I had planned to run the Royal Tunbridge Wells parkrun and keep up my chain of tourist events going, but a request to Stephanie from the Cyclopark run director changed my mind and my schedule has now been rewritten. I hadn't planned on walking either, but a combination of circumstances dictated otherwise. Being my local event I knew that the centenary milestone was fast approaching for the Cyclopark and I should have drawn my schedule up around it. But I had wanted to attend Royal Tonbridge Wells on account of theirs being a prime number event as well as the R that I am still missing as part of the alphabeteer challenge. These challenges are easily addictive and interfere with rational thought, hence my decision to skip Cycloparks centennial celebrations. However, Hayden and Phoebe have swimming lessons on Tuesday at the same place as Sarahs childr...

On the 8th October 2022 I ran the Walmer and Deal Seafront parkrun which was the 144th event held at the venue, my 98th parkrun and 33rd different course I'd attended. After two recent visits to the Kent Coast made even better by the weather, you'd forgive me for being cautious on betting on a hattrick. But as it was, I headed to another Kent venue at the seaside with amazing blue skies, no wind and spring like temperatures. The Walmer and Deal Seafront venue is probably the furthest venue in Kent to reach via my house as there isnt a direct route. So I set off at 7:20 with the sun low in the sky directly ahead of me as I head east along the M2 and A2 towards Dover.  I had never visited Walmer or Deal and so part of the appeal for me in ticking off all the parkruns in Kent is visiting places I'd never been before and exploring my home county. I had planned this run with the intention of ticking off another Fibonacci number (144), but hadn't realised the event was celeb...

On the 1st October 2022 I ran The Leas parkrun which was the 86th event held at the venue, my 97th parkrun and 32nd different course I'd attended. Working my way around the parkrun venues of Kent has left me at the mercy of the weather. Planning when to run specific events has been combining a number of variables including event numbers, event types and location. But it's also meant autumnal visits to the coast where wind conditions could potentially be tricky making for some difficult runs. I love the sea and the coast in all its seasons so have no concerns about running into a biting, near gale force headwind. In fact, I am actually relishing it. On the Friday night before I was due to run The Leas parkrun we went into town for my niece's 16th birthday meal. It was tipping down with rain and the wind was blowing strongly. I tried to remember the last wet parkrun I'd ran and struggled to recall anything other than a few soaking wet Cyclopark events towards the end of ...

On the 24th September 2022 I ran the Kingdom parkrun which was the 107th event held at the venue, my 96th parkrun and 31st different course I'd attended. This week I was due to run the Folkestone parkrun event, but was changed as detailed in my last update . This swap in the schedule was not only fortunate due to the great weather at Folkestone last week but meant that I could run Kingdoms 107th event and tick a prime number off in the process. Not sure I have done my planning well enough if things like this accidentally happen as they should certainly happen by design. Attempting to tick off parkruns by letters of the alphabet might seem a little obsessive to the outsider. But my argument is that without these obsessive type of interests I'd never have the experience of running events like Kingdom which are absolute gems in the parkrun event portfolio. And my experience of running these events enhances my appreciation for the organisation and for those who volunteer each week...

On the 17th September 2022 I ran the Folkestone parkrun which was the 350th event held at the venue, my 95th parkrun and 30th different course I'd attended. As a one car family I've only been able to tour this year due to an arrangement of convenience we've established with my in-laws. Every Friday we've driven off to the in-laws house, picked up my father-in-law's car and Stephanie has used that to perform taxi services for the children on Saturday mornings whilst I've used our car to drive to my various parkrun venues. I had planned to run Kingdom parkrun this week where I was looking to tick off my 'K' and meet up with Jennie and Tom Grimes who I'd last met up with at East Grinstead , but due to a late change of circumstances I had to swap plans around and run Folkestone this week and Kingdom next. Due to my father-in-law having a fishing trip, he needed his car this week and with Folkestone easily accessible by public transport it made sense to ...

On the 10th September 2022 I ran the Nonsuch parkrun which was the 501st event held at the venue, my 94th parkrun and 29th different course I'd attended. On the Thursday before parkrun the world received the news that our Queen, Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II had passed away at the age of 96. The UK would be in a period of national mourning and multiple sporting events had been cancelled as a mark of respect, including all football matches across every level, including grassroots. Fortunately the parkrun organisation decided against a blanket cancellation policy and left it to landowners and local representatives to determine the outcome on an event by event basis. There were inevitably multiple cancellations as courses such as Dartford, a community asset was using the bandstand as a location to receive floral tributes and wouldn't be able to run safely. I had planned to run Nonsuch parkrun, chasing the letter N to help complete my goal of running a different parkrun for ever...

On the 3rd September 2022 I ran the Pegwell Bay parkrun which was the 414th event held at the venue, my 93rd parkrun and 28th different course I'd attended. Options for the letter P are fairly few and far between from where I live, and with the dual aim of completing all the parkruns in Kent alongside the parkrun alphabet, Pegwell Bay was the perfect venue that fulfilled both criteria. Research had told me that the course was going to be flat and fast, and rumours of the course being slightly short of the official 5k required were plentiful online across various parkrun tourism groups on Facebook. I'm admittedly not a fast runner and wouldn't consider myself anyway athletic. I started parkrun with times of around 34-36 minutes and it has taken a lot of effort to get times down to a level I'm starting to feel pride in. My quickest ever parkrun time was registered earlier this year at the Cyclopark event which was the culmination in many weeks of repeated visits and slow...

On the 27th August 2022 I ran the East Grinstead parkrun which was the 189th event held at the venue, my 92nd parkrun and 27th different course I'd attended. The last time I visited East Grinstead was to pay a visit to my Nan who was in hospital having her wedding finger surgically removed. She was on a ward of females having a variety of cosmetic procedures. My grandfather, fondly know as Gramps teased the patients that were in the ward with her. Pointing to a lady who had a rather excessive bossum he said 'she's here to have her boobs reduced'. Looking around and pointing to a woman on the other side of the ward he said 'and she's having hers made bigger'. As I'm sliding down my chair getting redder and redder he says 'they should go in together, swap and save a few bob'. More than twenty-five years have passed since that moment and I finally felt comfortable returning to East Grinstead without being recognised. I needed to collect an 'E...