Banstead Woods parkrun - event 781

On the 16th September 2023 I ran the Banstead Woods parkrun which was the 781st event held at the venue, my 146th parkrun and 74th different course I'd attended.

Parkrun of course started at Bushy park in 2004 and it wasn't until 2007 when it was joined by a second event at Wimbledon Common. But both events were still known as time-trials and the idea of 'parkrun' was still some way off.

Six months after Wimbledon Common started a third time trial event started at Banstead Wood before further events popped up in Leeds, Richmond and Brighton. Before much longer there were ten time-trial events dotted across the country and parkrun was born.

In my quest to complete all of the parkrun events inside of the M25, I'd pretty much completed the southern section with Nonsuch, Riddlesdown and Roundshaw Downs all being ticked off in the last twelve months or so leaving Banstead Woods and Lloyd as my only gaps. With good weather over the last few weeks it was a perfect time to visit the world's third oldest parkrun and a trip to the woods.

I had originally intended to visit Banstead Woods in time to visit event number 777 as part of the Nelson challenge, but with Parkrun asking app developers to remove the number challenges from their apps, it felt slightly wrong going along to an event and disregarding the advice which was made as a preventative step to ease overcrowding.

With events like Banstead Woods, there's not a huge amount of car parking space and it's fairly rural. So the last thing the event needs is to have to handle traffic as well as the logistics of extra finishing tokens and the like. That's not even considerong congestion on the route which along the finish would have struggled to cope with large numbers.

In any case, I arrived nice and early. It was another bright sunny morning and the September heatwave was still lingering. I parked as directed on the course page and made my way to the meeting area.

The route is an clockwise lap and three quarters of the woodland trail, with the start and finish in different places. The start line is at the top of a steep hill and the meeting place is at the bottom on the turning point onto the second lap at the bottom of the hill.

As parkrun courses go, this one is one of the more straightforward ones. Shaped like a parallelogram participants only have four corners to worry about and they are all taken left in the same direction.

From the top of the hill participants run south west following the trail path which gently undulates as woodlands tend to do. Running through the woods is great for the mind as there is something peaceful and serene running through the trees, particularly when, like Saturday beams of sunshine break through the leaves and bounce rays of light across the route.

After following the route around and taking two left hand turns as you go, the course starts to dip downhill. Whilst the initial hill you climb to reach the start is steep, the downhills are much longer and more gentle. In fact, despite the severe upward climb of the hill on the second lap, the net elevation sees more downhill than up on account of only having to run up the hill once.

It was this prior knowledge that helped me overcome this particular challenge. Normally hills and I are not good friends, but knowing I only had to face it once planted a seed of positivity in my mind and gave me the mental strength to battle my way to the top. It was actually quite satisfying overtaking three or four people along the way, even if it was through a face of serious grimace.

Once the hill has been battled, it's a case of following the lap around again all the way to the finish funnel which sits tightly on the right hand side of the trail path on the edge of a slope under a canopy of trees.

I finished in 103rd place out of a field of 191 participants in a time of 28.19. As mentioned earlier, there's something magical about running through the woods. Just like running by the sea makes me happy, running through the woods provides nourishment for the soul.