Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

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...