Karpendonkse Plas parkrun - event 145

On the 20th May 2024 I ran the Karpendonkse Plas parkrun which was the 145th event held at the venue, my 184th parkrun and 107th different course I'd attended.

The sole purpose of our visit to the Netherlands was to tick off the Z and to complete the parkrun alphabet. The fact that there was an opportunity to run another parkrun on the same weekend was a complete bonus. So therefore I wasn't actually that fussed which event we headed to on the Monday. All I knew was that we were staying near Efteling and we needed to head south at some point after the event to make our way home.

Our choice was made somewhat easier with the declarations made by the events themselves. Just because events are able to host special days, doesn't mean that all of them do. It depends on the permissions provided by the land owner, or volunteer appetite. As it was, there were closer events to our accommodation, but neither of them were running on the Monday. The nearest and most practical event was Karpendonkse Plas, which is in Eindhoven, which not only made an easy drive from where we were staying it made an easy location to head back to Calais from afterwards. It also provided us with options to spend some time after the run if we wanted to explore and take in some of the sights - which we duly did.

After our visit to Zuiderpark on the Saturday we stopped off for breakfast in The Hague city centre and had a wander around. As we had Hayden and River with us we couldn't walk aimlessly and stop every once in a while for a beer or a glass of wine had it been just Stephanie and I. So we decided to head to the Madurodam Model village which is local attraction I had visited before.

Way back in 1991 we visited Holland with the school and I have reasonably good recollections of being eleven years old and exploring the country with my classmates. We visited Madurodam at dusk and our visit was more widely remembered for one of our classmates having an accident in his pants more than the attraction itself.

So visiting it again with the children was a little bit of a nostalgia trip for me and it was weird visiting a place that you'd been before so long ago and having feint flashbacks every now and then. More bizarrely was Stephanie whose brain was playing it's own memory tricks on her. She was getting strange feelings of deja vu and had evidently also visited Madurodam before, but she hadn't quite realised it.

Nostalgia trip or not, the park itself was definitely worth a visit, particularly as it's not just a model village any longer but a general theme park that celebrates the Netherlands, it's culture and history. There are various interactive exhibits dotted around the park for visitors to immerse themselves into, with the highlight undoubtedly coming from a digital journey aboard the flying Dutchman.

These posts are supposed to be about the parkrun events I've visited and documented, but the build up to.this particular parkrun day was a little more memorable than normal parkrun days so forgive me for going on a little bit of a tangent.

As mentioned in my previous post, we'd designed this trip with the kids in mind and wanted to visit both Plopsaland De Panne and Efteling to give the kids some experience of visiting anverseas theme park. Hayden hadn't quite managed to conquer his fears on the Friday but on Sunday morning ahead of our trip to Efteling he woke up with a new sense of purpose.

He told us that he was determined to go on the Python ride at Efteling and it definitely would be his first 'upside down' ride. We arrives at the park and head around to the area where the bigger rollercoaster attractions were and took in a couple 'warm up' rides as Hayden called the. We walked past the Baron 1898 ride which features a vertical drops and Hayden declared that there was no way on earth he was going on that! 

Eventually we made our way around to the Python and I joined the queue without making a fuss about it and everyone else subsequently followed. During the visit to Plopsaland De Panne Hayden managed to get all the way through the queue for one of the rides before having a meltdown and stepped over the train straight towards the exit. So whilst Hayden had joined the queue to ride Python there was no guarantee that he would actually ride it.

We made our way all the way to the front of the queue and still Hayden showed no signs of crying or bottling out of it again. He was however a few shades whiter than normal, but made it into the car where he was strapped in and away we went.

Just like Oliver and just like Phoebe before him, he came off that ride a changed boy! Gone was the fear and nervousness and in it's place was excitement, confidence and a bring it on mentality! Two trips around the Python rollercoaster he made that day as well as two around Baron 1898! So much for never!

Efteling was a brilliant day out for us as a family and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something different. There is so much to do for all the family and the ride line up is wide and varied. It might be a three hour trip iThento mainland Europe by car but it's definitely worth making the trip.

Having taken what felt like a million steps over three days, running a parkrun was the last thing I needed. But we'd planned the whole weekend for that very purpose so we were committed to it. Plus I'd promised River I'd run around with her so it wasn't likely to be particularly exhausting.

Karpendonkse Plas is a green space on the edge of the central district of Eindhoven and features a lake with fields and woodland. The start is on the south west side of the lake and features two very small laps of the park area followed by two larger laps of the lake.

We parked on the road that ran parallel to the park and had a short walk around part of the course to the meeting point. When we arrived at the start the first people we saw were the last people we saw at Zuiderpark! The three deaf guys from Ireland looked at us with slight suspicion, as I'm sure we returned the same impression. We exchanged hello's again and caught up on our various experiences of our trip thus far. No sooner had the pleasantries been exchanged it was time for the run.

Knowing that I was running with River I wasn't quite sure what to expect. She has run the junior parkrun event down the prom before and hasn't been particularly quick around the course so I did question whether she'd complete the full 5k. Despite shooting out the blocks and running fairly rapidly around the first two small laps she eventually ran out of steam.

The first two small laps were actually very memorable, not just for Rivers pace, but for the interaction between parkrunners and the participants of a keep fit class who were also making the best use of the park. On a short stretch of path on the small lap there were a handful of people doing an intense workout lined on one side of the path with another group of people directly opposite them. So we had to run between them which we great fun as the parkrunners were offering the keep fit guys encouragement and the keep fit guys were offering the parkrunners encouragement in return. It really was a unique and fun parkrun moment which I've never had anywhere else.

Inevitably, after Rivers burst of pace around the two small laps she burnt herself out and I spent two laps of the lake encouraging her to keep going. At one stage she offered me her hand so that I could drag her along. But just like Hayden she stubbornly refused to keep running and when she did, she ran at 100 miles an hour and couldn't keep a slow steady pace despite me trying to slow her down and offer her advice.

I finished in 119th place out of a field of 130 participants in a time of 41.20. By the time we'd finished, the three Irish guys had made a mad dash for the airport so we head into Eindhoven in the hunt for more pancakes or waffles.

We ended up taking a quick look at the Philips stadium, home of PSV Eindhoven and around the Philips museum which put Eindhoven on the map. The Philips story is quite a remarkable one and the museum really quite inspiring.

It may well have been a trip for me to celebrate and enjoy some.psrlrun tourism, but for the kids it was educational and certainly from Hayden's perspective a trip he'll never forget for overcoming his fears and his act of bravery. 

Can't ask for any more than that no?