Dulwich parkrun - event 541

On the 21st October 2023 I ran the Dulwich parkrun which was the 541st event held at the venue, my 151st parkrun and 79th different course I'd attended.

After three weeks of parkrun events that featured hills, hills and more hills it was time to put that grueling effort to good use with a parkrun PB attempt at everyone's favourite PB attempt parkrun location - Dulwich parkrun.

The course record here is an astonishing 13:57 which was set five years ago but consistently people come close as a whole range of athletes, including Olympians use the event as part of their training programmes.

I'm not an athlete and far, far, far from being an Olympian, but if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me and well, everything's relative right?

Dulwich parkrun was also the next stop on my long running ambition to run all of the parkrun events inside of the M25, so a chance to kill two birds with one stone. If I failed in one goal, I'll have definitely achieved the other.

Yesterday saw the last remnants of the first big winter storm, storm Babet. And so when I arrived I spent much longer than normal hiding in the car trying to stay out of the rain. It wasn't quite as biblical as my visit to Woodbank with Hayden, but the weather wasn't looking much fun.

Fortunately there was a short lull in the weather which allowed me to scout the park briefly, which I did by entering the park at the northernmost entrance and walking around the main path to where the start was on the southern side.

The course takes part on the main route around the park, three laps in an anti-clockwise direction. Such is the simplicity of the course there are no marshalls on the route and runners simply stay on the main, wide road that circles the park until they reach the start/finish area on the third pass and enter the finish funnel, which due to the number of participants is of the double variety.

At Bushy parkrun, my first experience of the double funnel I lost out due to the savvy woman in front of me who pushed in and made her way 50 places up the finishing order. I decided early on that I'd be keeping my wits about me, but I never had to in the end as the standard single funnel seemed to cope with the number and the double one wasn't needed.

Knowing that I was attempting to set a new personal parkrun best time I was determined to give it my all. I started in the right place in the middle of the crowd and the crowd set off without much delay. On some courses, the tight start means that it can be slow to get away. But there was no such worries at Duwich where the wide paths allows people to get going quite quickly.

My pace felt good and I enjoyed the run, although there were a few parts of the lap which weren't strictly flat. I felt like I'd overtaken more people than had overtaken me and so when I crossed the finish line I crossed it feeling really pleased with myself.

I was handed the number 277 token and my Strava finished at 26:52. It wasn't quite a new PB, but quite often the official time comes up a little quicker, which a couple of hours later it did, I had finished in 26:49, which was ten seconds slower than my best parkrun time and joined third which I was chuffed about.

However, a few hours later whilst looking at my parkrun app I noticed that there was a difference in my finishing time and place. I was now showing as finishing 275th out of a field of 467 participants in a time of 26:34. So according to the new set of results I'd beaten my previous fastest parkrun time by 5 seconds which was exactly what I was hoping for, but not entirely convinced on its accuracy.

It just means that I've got to beat it again now though doesn't it?