Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 23rd July 2022 I ran the Hoblingwell parkun which was the 198th event held at the venue, my 87th parkrun and 22nd different course I'd attended. Having not run for nearly three weeks aside from an attempted run at the Warszawa-Praga event two weeks ago I was nervous about resuming running activity. Judging when your body is ready is not an easy task, particularly when your not accustomed to niggly running injuries and are generally impatient by nature. My parkrun planner has been carefully curated to find a blended mixture between alphabet achievements, ticking events off inside the M25, completing all the parkuns in Kent and working through the list of nearest events not done yet (NENDY'S). Ironically, after my injury the next event scheduled was Hoblingwell. An event inside the M25, third on my NENDY list and inside a little pocket of parkuns which I'd already completed and made sense for me to tick off.  Indeed, I'd also been hobbling very well recently! I h...

On the 16th July 2022 I volunteered at the Cyclopark parkun which was the 87th event held at the venue, the third time I'd volunteered at the event and my 8th and 9th volunteer credits overall. As I'd injured my calf at Lullingstone two weeks ago and hadn't quite recovered at last week's event in Warsaw I gave myself some extended time off from running to give myself some time to heal and recuperate. I'm not a very patient person in general and have hated not sticking to the routine I'd spent a long time getting used to. I had severe blisters in the autumn last year which taught me trying to do something too soon can ultimately mean being out for longer than necessary, so this time around I'm more determined to do the right thing. Whilst my Wednesday wellbeing run (we get an hour extra break on Wednesdays to do something for our mental health at work) is difficult to find suitable alternatives. Parkrun Saturdays are straightforward - instead of running an e...

On the 9th July 2022 I ran the Warszawa-Praga parkun which was the 408th event held at the venue, my 86th parkrun and 21st different course I'd attended. Being a parkrun obsessive means looking at any opportunity to fit in an event when there's a possibility to do so. In fact, having a parkrun event can be the difference between either going somewhere or not. In this case, we were fortunate because we had a choice between a number of cities who all had parkruns nearby. Stephanie and I for a number of years have wanted to see Coldplay, who are one of my all time favourite bands. Absolutely everyone I know who has seen them have all said that they are supremely special live. So when tickets went on sale for their Music of the Spheres World Tour we jumped at the chance of securing our tickets. The problem was, the tickets for Wembley were really expensive. By way of an experiment I compared prices for some of the other European cities on the tour and found that the prices were mu...

On the 2nd July 2022 I ran the Lullingstone parkun which was the 305th event held at the venue, my 85th parkrun and 20th different course I'd attended. When researching different parkrun events for tourism purposes there's a sublist of events that sit under the term 'must visit'. Whilst each event is unique in its own right there are certain events that have a special characteristic that make them stand out from the rest. In the case of Lullingstone it's the events reputation as one of the UKs toughest courses that make people travel from all over the country in order to conquer it's proven challenge. For me, it was the lure of the challenge, but also the fact that I needed an 'L' as part of the alphabet challenge, it's also a Kentish run I'd not completed and it was number two on my NENDY list (Nearest Event Not Done Yet). It was also a course that my Dad had previously run and so I had a subconscious goal of wanting to beat his time - which sa...