Ifield Mill Pond parkrun - event 111

On the 15th April 2023 I ran the Ifield Mill Pond parkrun which was the 111th event held at the venue, my 126th parkrun and 55th different course I'd attended.

The primary reason for attending the Ifield Mill Pond parkrun was of course to collect the letter 'I' as part of the parkrun alphabeteer challenge. This means I've now collected all of the letters available from within the UK leaving me just the elusive 'Z', which necessitates a trip overseas.

I coincided my visit with another Nelson number, the first of the sequence which is of course number 111. It appeared that I wasn't the only tourist with this ambition as upon turning up to the venue there was clearly a large tourist contingent notable by the number of yellow and black 'cow' buffs.

The fact that there were an abundance of tourists wasn't lost on Amanda, the volunteer who gave the first timers meeting, who started by wryly asking 'so, dow have any tourists this week?' in fact, the full briefing was a humourous affair and she did a great job explaining the intricacies of the course.

Some courses need very little explanation, others like Ifield Mill Pond require a little more detail. These courses always sound especially complex and sow seeds of anxiety in my mind. I'm going to get lost, or I'm going to repeat a party miss out a part etc. But I've enough experience now to put these anxieties to bed. Whatever the course, whatever the explanation, just follow the people in front and you'll be fine - unless you're in first place of course!

The course, all on tarmac starts off with an out and back section. Once you've returned to the finish you turn around again and back the way you came, except after a couple of hundred metres you turn left and dip down across a bridge over a small river. From here you go around in a loop of what feels like an island (although it's not) and come back again across the river back up onto the main out and back path. This whole sequence is then repeated and on the third time back towards the start instead of turning around again, you head on a short distance past the turnaround point to the finish.

This whole sequence was explained to us using the marshalls as reference points. Of course the marshalls change weekly, but this week we got to look out for Dave 9 times, Sue 3 times and Marilyn 3 times as well!

I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between Sue, nor Marilyn but I managed to navigate the course without too much of a challenge and completed another parkrun without getting lost!

It was a very narrow course with a few puddles on the route. But as we'd had a lot of rain this week the grass either side of the pathways were saturated and very muddy. So whilst the course started off a little congested there wasn't much room for overtaking particularly on the points where you turnaround and had a lot of the faster runners tearing around towards you.

There were a few near misses between runners, but overall being a fairly compacted course with lots of two way traffic is was a highly interactive event with lots of friends high giving one another and shouting out encouragement as they passed.

I can imagine the lake area being quite nice in the warmer months, but Saturday morning felt like an autumn morning rather than spring with a cold grey sky and muddy puddles along the course.

I finished in 90th position out of a field of 228 participants in a time of 27:52. This was a significantly higher number of people than normal and so full thanks must go to the volunteers for hosting us yesterday and putting on a fantastic event!