Tonbridge parkrun - event 391

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 their Facebook page, meant that I could head down the A21 admiring the white, wintery scenes around me looking at the in-car temperature display which read -5 degrees and wonder just what the hell I was doing.

Tonbridge is another place that I'm not too familiar with and have been led to as a result of parkrun. My only previous visit was to clip and cimb a couple of years ago but the route took me around the town centre so I didn't really see too much of it. But in getting to parkrun I was taken directly through the town centre itself which looked like a place to definitely come back to and explore in more detail on another time with a range of bars and restaurants to visit.

The course event page directs participants to the lower castle car park which looked to service not just the main high street a short walk away, but the local rugby club, the park itself and the local swimming pool. The swimming pool itself has public toilets for parkrunners to make use of which I did both before and after the run (more about that shortly).

The park sits next to the carpark and is accessible by one of two bridges which cross a small river that bisects the two. The start is pretty much directly at the end of closest bridge to the car park and starts off on grass around the edge of a sequence of football pitches. When I arrived I took a walk around the park admiring the frosty, wintery scenes which were made all the more impressive with clear blue skies and a sun that lay big and low on the horizon.

As I was a little unsure of the exact route of the course I didn't venture beyond the football pitches but head back to the start in preparation for the beginning of the event. The start of parkrun is a funny thing to witness. At 8:50, ten minutes before the official start time you wonder if any one is going to take part. Ten minutes later you find yourself in the middle of a packed crowd of 300 people who magically appear from all sorts of directions. Tonbridge felt like a magnification of that, with people waiting in cars until the last possible moment to enjoy the warmth.

Once the formalities were over, we were off, running around the football pitches I'd seen earlier and then off right over a bridge into another set of fields which contained rugby posts instead of football posts. This hump over the bridge was pretty much the only elevation on the course with the rest of the route being virtually flat across the distance.

The course is a single out and back lollipop route, so everything we did on the way out was retraced on the way back. From the rugby pitches the path takes a right hand turn which itself is a small 100m out and back. So you run to the end of one path, turn around and run back in the direction you've just came from. As we were still at the beginning of the course it was a nice opportunity to interact with other runners with lots of high-fiving and encouragement going on.

The next section of the route was an interesting one. From the rugby fields the path takes you under a low-bridge and brings you out onto a trail path surrounded by trees and runs alongside the river. The path then goes onto cross the river a number of times as it meanders around it. I lost count of the number of bridges we ran over but I'm sure that there was a minimum of three. But the contrast of the trail route, which felt like a cross country run was stark in comparison to the first part which was a standard run through a municipal park.

Enjoying the change of scenery and change of surface it wasn't long before things changed again as the course met a lake. This was the lolly on the end of the stick and the course was to run all the way around it. Gone was the trail path beneath the feet to a compacted gravel path instead. Gone was the cross country vibe and replaced by a country park run with a wide expanse of water to the right to enjoy the views of as you run. 

After a full tour of the lake we rejoined the path through the woods and made our way back across the bridges and back under the tunnel that took you beneath the railway and back into the fields with the rugby pitches. 

I don't think I've run a course with such variation to it before and it certainly made it an interesting and enjoyable course to run. There's also opportunity for a sprint finish what with the course being flat and ending on tarmac paths. 

I finished in 163rd place in a time of 28.23 out of a field of 294 participants. It was the 23rd parkrun out of 24 in Kent that I'd completed leaving me with just Margate left to complete the set.

I was looking forward to getting back in the car and putting the heating on in an attempt to thaw out a little. Whilst I had obviously warmed up through running, my body still felt cold on account of the air temperature still being below freezing. But on return back to the car I'd realised I'd left my lights on and the car wouldn't start due to flattening the battery.

Faced with a 90 minutes wait in the freezing temperatures I head back to the swimming pool where I made use of the public facilities and used the cafe for a spot of breakfast in the warmth. Not every parkrun is blessed with those facilities so close by, so I lucked out in that sense. It could have been a lot worse!