Bushy parkrun - event 899

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 milestone that I'd meet for a while, I had arranged for Stephanie and the children to attend with me. No football training, or performing arts clubs for them, we'd be getting up at the crack of dawn to be in Teddington for 8am in order to beat the mad dash for available car parking spaces which were free of charge right next to the start line.

The children were (not) typically enthusiastic, but had agreed to parkwalk with Stephanie who would rather have waited at the finish and clap me over the line. But I encouraged them to parkwalk, my perspective being that it was a beautiful park why wouldn't you want to walk around it? But on arrival, the park was actually more beautiful than I had expected.

With a low autumn sun rising over the lake that sat beside the car park and the trees resplendent in their autumn colours it was quite the arrival. With time to kill and legs to stretch we took a short stroll around the vicinity of the carpark and immediately became acquainted with the local wildlife. A stag was grazing lazingly in the long grass and we stood quietly watching him not wanting to spook him and send him hurtling off away. Nearby photographers with telephoto lenses were taking what must be quite spectacular photos as the lighting and colours provided the perfect ingredients for a money shot.

We made our way over the toilet block which sat next to the playground alongside the start. A row of cones in between two lines of trees indicated just how wide the start line was. I had seen videos on YouTube of the start and it looked to be quite something. There are normally around 1,000 participants each week and the sight of them stampeding away at the start was something I was looking forward to.

After the traditional first-timers meeting where the course was introduced and standard introductions were made, we headed off behind the line of cones to find a spot ready for the start. I was listening to the race briefing via the loud-speakers that were setup just in front of us and almost without warning there was a 3-2-1 'GO'. Just like that we all set off at once and over a thousand people made their way forward. I hadn't had an opportunity to say goodbye to Stephanie and the kids, but as I looked behind me, someone had obviously not spotted the speaker stand and had collided with it, sending the speaker and themselves flying in the process. For a split-second I had thought about stopping to see if they were okay, but there were plenty of people around him and he looked more embarrassed then in pain so I carried on as I was.

The course is unique from the previous 33 venues that I've run so fat in that the start and finish are displaced from one another in a point to point style route as opposed to a single lap.

From the start carries on for 250 meters on the grass between two lines of trees, before funneling onto a track that takes participants to the eastern end of the park in a kilometre long straight. This long straight gives participants the opportunity to find their sweet spot in the crowd and involves a lot of jockeying around and a few bumping of elbows. It does also require a fair amount of patience and co-operation from the people around you as everyone else is doing similar things with varying levels of pace.

At the first kilometer next to the cricket ground, the path turns left, right, left in fairly quick succession along the eastern side of the park taking participants north almost following the perimeter of the park itself. Before it reaches the perimeter, it takes another left hand turn, returning westward where it switches once again to the right and further north. This switchback is where two parts of the course almost meet, and where I saw Stephanie and the kids walking as I ran by them on my way around to the finish. We only just missed one another, they not seeing me and I didn't have any energy at that point to shout their names!

After the switch-back and heading north-east the path does eventually meet the perimeter of the park and turns left again and heads west towards Chestnut Avenue, which is the main road that runs straight through the middle of the park. One you reach Chestnut Avenue itself, you turn left again, off the path and onto the grass that runs south west back towards the start. This part of the course toys with you a little and lures into a false sense of security. From the grass you can see the carpark and the Diana fountain up ahead and so visually you think that you don't have far left to go. But the course turns left half way down the avenue and leads you back away from the start again.

The grass that runs alongside the line of trees where the roads name is derived undulates gently and I found it quite good fun dipping up and down ever such a little bit. Any deeper and the undulations would quickly go from fun to energy sapping and towards the back-end of the course this is one of the last things that you want.

Fortunately the whole course is flat and actually quite fast despite it changing from paths to grass on a couple of occasions. It is predominantly path and the grass areas had yet turned to mud despite the number of puddles on the route.

Once you've turned left, off of Chestnut Avenue the path turns back south-east and heads toward the kissing point of the switch-back I referred to earlier. The scenery changes again slightly here and you feel more enclosed in the long grass that runs either side of the pathway. At the switch-back and at the point I saw Stephanie and the kids the path turns right again and doubles back south-west and the final leg of the course begins as the view of the lake approaches with the mass of people arriving at the finish line and double funnel.

As I made my way across the line I was instructed to take the right hand funnel and was given a card with a picture of a cake and the letter 'O' written on it. The person ahead of me was instructed to go left and so everyone who had finished behind me followed me into the right hand funnel. This splitting of finishers is designed to manage the crowds of people finishing in sequence, with the theory being that a double funnel has twice the capacity of a single one which seemed to work really well.

However, I learned how the funnel operated as I was in it and observed the goings on as they happened around me. There was a lady who finished next behind me who whilst in the funnel made every attempt to get in front of me. I didn't mind really, if she wanted to finish a place higher than me then she was welcome to it. But that wasn't quite what happened. As I've let her through the funnel managers have stopped me on account of my piece of paper with a cake and letter 'O'. This piece of paper was part of the signal the funnel managers needed to switch over to the next funnel and let the next set of people through to collect their finish tokens. So the lady who I thought was jumping a spot above me in the queue was actually jumping about 40 spaces, evidently knowing what she was doing and being a bit of an expert in the way of the double funnel. Cunning? Yes, but in the spirit of parkrun? Definitely not.

On receiving my finish token I retraced my steps back along the course until I reached Hayden and Phoebe who were walking somewhat further up the road than Stephanie and Oliver. Hayden asked me if he could jog and so the two of us made an attempt to jog back to the finish line. He done well, but didn't quite make it all in one go. He wanted to save his energy for the 'big sprint' to the finish line and kept asking 'Shall I sprint now? Shall I sprint now?' Not quite knowing where the finish line was and when to give it full beans.

Phoebe joined us not long after and we waited for Stephanie and Oliver to join us. They arrived at the finish line a few minutes later and bypassed the finish line altogether. Apparently in an attempt to catch up with Hayden and Phoebe the two of them had taken a short-cut across the course and had guilt pangs about finishing higher than someone they might have overtaken as a result of their cheating. Definitely the right thing to do in the circumstances, but why they felt that they needed to take a short cut in the first place is beyond me. With a bit of luck, either of them will eventually get bitten by the parkrun bug and we can return for them to run the course properly!

I finished in 644th place with a time of 27.41 out a field of 1,233 participants. I was actually really pleased with my time considering the lack of running I had done over the previous two weeks which included my first parkwalk last week at Cyclopark. My recent results have been really positive, albeit on a series of flat and fast courses. The true test will come in a couple of weeks time at the more trickier events and once the weather starts to impact the terrain.

Was the pilgrimage to Bushy park worth it and did it meet my expectations? Yes and yes again! Even if you aren't quite an obsessive parkrunner and looking to run an interesting 5k course with beautiful surroundings then Bushy is well worth a visit. If like me, you are a fan of touristing and ticking off different venues then it is an absolute must. I just now need to plan another reason to return.