Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 25th March 2023 I ran the Hackney Marshes parkrun which was the 593rd event held at the venue, my 123rd parkrun and 52nd different course I'd attended. When I was a kid, I had a t-shirt made by Nike, or Adidas - one of the two. It was black with distinct football pitch markings across it and other related football messaging. But it was the distinctive football pitch markings that would always prompt a question from people whenever I wore the t-shirt as to what they represented. I didn't think that they represented anything until someone answered the question for me. They were representing the football pitch markings at Hackney Marshes. Since then, I've been fascinated by the thought of an area of parkland devoted to over 80 football pitches and have read books, watched movies, documentaries and television programmes about football in this part of East London and its impact upon the culture of grassroots involvement in the national game. In the 1960's and 1970...

On the 18th March 2023 I ran the Raphael parkrun which was the 333rd event held at the venue, my 122nd parkrun and 51st different course I'd attended. Last week was a trip to Malling, a venue I'd ran at before and enjoyed revisiting a lovely course. But I missed the thrill of arriving at a new venue and experiencing something new and fresh. Which is why I wanted to hit the tourist trail again and start chipping away at the 50 I need to reach the magic 100 different parkrun venues. Raphael park in Romford was celebrating event 333 this week, which is another set of collectable numbers known as the Nelson challenge. These numbers are 111, 222, 333 etc and is named after Admiral Lord Nelson who allegedly had only 1 eye, 1 arm and 1 leg at the end of his life. Romford is also reasonably close to home and was one of the closest events for which I've not yet attended, despite being over the other side of the river. I was surprisingly joined by my mate Foordy who was home again f...

On the 11th March 2023 I ran the Malling parkrun which was the 296th event held at the venue, my 121st parkrun and 2nd time I'd attended the event. After a period of heavy touristing culminating in last week's 50th different event celebration in York, I found myself with a bit of a dilemma. I had planned to run at Alton Water , a scenic run around a lake near Ipswich which was celebrating its 71st event. But as usual the challenge of getting access to the car wasn't straightforward and so I was trying to decide between three events in London from which to choose from; Fulham Palace , Clapham Common or Burgess . So I put the question to the boys on our WhatsApp group and the answer from Mark was, have I done the one at Leybourne Lakes? Last April, I ran Malling parkrun, event number 249. I came 100th out of a field of 256 participants in a time of 28:17. I ran the event with Mum and haven't been able to pursuade her to join me on a parkrun ever since!  The course that...

On the 4th March 2023 I ran the York parkrun which was the 450th event held at the venue, my 120th parkrun and 50th different course I'd attended. Any UK based parkrunner with ambitions to tick off a parkrun beginning with each letter of the alphabet is likely to have a commute on their hands. Until very recently there was only one parkrun that began with Y. Pre-COVID, you had the option of Yeovil Montague or York, but the former fell by the wayside. In recent weeks Yarborough Leisure Centre has popped up doubling the opportunities available, but based In Lincolnshire it is still a sizeable effort to get there for many. My parkrun itinerary has been planned around reaching York in time to celebrate my 50th different parkrun venue. This was why, over the festive period I elected to run at events I'd already visited before as otherwise it would have meant falling out of sync. Looking at the football calendar, Gillingham were due to play Harrogate Town on March 4th. A ground I ha...

Back in the December of 2011, my eldest son Oliver was a mascot for Gillingham FC as a treat for his fifth birthday. Last weekend, history repeated itself as my youngest son Hayden experienced the same thing as a celebration of his eighth trip around the sun. Reading back through the blog I wrote after Oliver walked out on the hallowed turf of the Priestfield Stadium I was struck by the contrast between the circumstances of both boys mascot appearances. Oliver was very much living my dream for me and he was a vehicle for living out the things I wanted to do as a child but never did myself.  Oliver enjoys playing football and has had an incredible football experience growing up playing at academy level when he was younger and could have achieved huge things if his heart was in it. But he hasn't quite been bitten by the same football bug that Hayden and I have. Hayden has developed a passion for the Gills since we've been season ticket holders, culminating this season in our Le...