Heaton Park parkrun - event 624

On the 2nd March 2024 I ran the Heaton Park parkrun which was the 624th event held at the venue, my 172nd parkrun and 96th different course I'd attended.

This parkrun touristing lark is hard work. Planning where to run each week and what number event is exhausting. Adding the challenge of combining it with football adds a whole new level of complexity, and budget!

Stephanie had planned a trip to Portugal this weekend with my sister, my nieces and some of my female cousins to celebrate my cousin Bethany turning 30. I was due to pick up all Stephanie's parenting commitments on Saturday morning and so my usual parkrun trip was due to take a back seat.

I'm very lucky to have Stephanie do the Saturday routine. Hayden and Phoebe have football and performing arts clubs that are reasonably close to one another and timings currently work quite nicely. I'm aware that if the situation was different or changes then my parkrunning ambitions will need to be scaled back accordingly.

When I found out the dates that Stephanie was away I joked with Phoebe. Why didn't she come to Manchester with me and Hayden to watch football and maybe do parkrun too? She wasn't impressed! Said it was activities all for boys and she wouldn't enjoy it. But after the Swindon game where Hayden was mascot again for the Gills she came home so much more positive about the football and how much she'd enjoyed it. I saw an opportunity, and swung the situation around again to my advantage. So, Phoebe. Now you like football now, how about that trip to Manchester?

And so that's how we found ourselves heading up the M6 on a cold Friday night at the beginning of March. To do another parkrun/football double with Heaton Park parkrun and Salford City Vs Gillingham.

We stayed in a cheap hotel in Salford, a stones throw away from the Moor Lane stadium, home of Salford City FC. We had a choice of parkruns at our disposal as apart from Woodbank I've not ran at any other parkrun in the area. Having looked up the options,the closest parkrun to the ground was Heaton Park and so that seemed to be as good a place as any.

In fact, I'm part of a parkrun group on Facebook made up of people like me who do parkrun and combine it with football. There's a surprising number of us. But part of the group talks about achieving a 'grail' which is combing a visit to a football ground and it's nearest parkrun on the same day. So the choice of Heaton Park wasn't that random after all.

Hayden and Phoebe are not natural sports people and getting them to participate in parkrun is hard work. Even before we arrived at the carpark Phoebe was asking if she could stay in the car. And just like our last visit to Manchester and Woodbank parkrun it was raining, which seemed to bring back bad memories for Hayden who was also trying his best to convince me to turn the car around and go back to the hotel.

Nevertheless, I've become battle hardened now to the moaning and complaining, just as the kids are at me ignoring them. But it's a battle of wills neither of us will back down from.

So we joined the back of a near 800 people strong crowd at the start line, next to the lake under a cold, grey Mancunian sky. It had been raining on and off, and we were a little damp, but the event eventually got started around 9:10, which must be the latest I've ever known an event to start.

The course is made up of two laps, one small and one large and is taken in an anti-clockwise direction. Starting by the northern edge of the lake, situated at the southern end of the vast Heaton Park participants head east alongside the parks railway line before turning left and heading up Angina Hill.

The first lap only takes you part way up the hill before turning left again and completing the smaller lap which circles around and rejoins the start/finish straight which is just over 1km in distance.

Following the same route the course reaches Angina Hill again for the second time and heads all the way up to Heaton House which sits proudly looking out over Manchester. We were told in the first timers meeting that this is one of the highest parts of the area and on sunnier days the views are quite something. We had to make do with grey, cloudy skies with not much visibility. But what we could see gave us enough of a hint to want to return back on a better weather day in the future.

After the house is passed, the path circles around it snaking it's way through trees on the side of a hill where a golf course lay on the right. All the while I've got Hayden and mostly Phoebe moaning that they have stitches, aching limbs and a whole other manner of issues. 

Phoebe is actually old enough now to run by herself, but she didn't want to and neither did Hayden want to leave her. But she was holding Hayden back as I know he would have run a little bit more had it just been the two of us.

Anyhow, after the house the course returns back around to the front and heads downhill in a slightly different direction to the way we came up. I was actually quite gutted about missing out on running this course as although there's an uphill, it wasn't an unsurmountable hurdle and the downhill.looked like great fun!

Once at the bottom of the hill you reach a 4k marker. You also reach the start/finish straight, but you have to run past it and head around the lake to make up the full course distance. The end of the lake path reaches the other end of the start/finish straight and so to complete the course you run back the way you started. 

Phoebe and Hayden saw this as an opportunity to finally join the parkrun party and so the last 200m was taken at full pelt. All stitches, aching backs, swollen ankles and other such injuries were cured and off they went with me clinging on to stay in touch.

But they did it, which is all that matters, and I'm convinced that despite the grumbles that they actually do enjoy it. At least I keep telling myself that!

I finished in 782nd place out of a field of 804 participants in a time of 50.26. As I said above, it's a course I'd definitely like to run as I'd imagine it being really good fun! Maybe on a day when it's a bit warmer and not raining (does it ever not rain in Manchester?)