Colwick parkrun - event 611

On the 21st September 2024 I ran the Colwick parkrun which was the 611th event held at the venue, my 202nd parkrun and 124th different course I'd attended.

Following the Gills around the country has enabled me to combine football fandom with parkrun touristing and expand the range of possible places to visit on a Saturday morning massively. But travelling with Hayden in tow means that I have to make a few compromises when it comes to picking an appropriate venue.

As Gillingham were playing Notts County again we had an opportunity to tick off another one of the many Nottingham events. We had already done Wollaton Hall which is a jewel in the Nottingham crown and so I didn't necessarily have a preference which of the others to visit.

Having a look at the event numbers of all the courses available I had already run most of them and so the only one that met all of the criteria was Forest Rec. We also had the option of Colwick which is the closest event to Notts County and would have earned another 'grail' as part of the 92 Parkrun/Football rules on Facebook, but it was scheduled as event 611 and I had already ran that event number at Finsbury Park last year.

Reading this as a complete stranger you'd be forgiven for thinking I'm slightly strange. And I agree with you, this is far from normal, rational behaviour. But as with most things, I'm not alone in celebrating my niche!

So with plans made to visit Forest Rec parkrun we were all set to go and I was lying in our Premier Inn hotel room the night before and noticed a message on the Forest REC's Facebook page. Due to a fair being set up on the grounds of Forest Rec there would be limited parking and they'd be running their alternative course.

I knew that the standard course involved a few hills and I'd already promised Hayden we'd walk up them but the alternative course was the removal of any of the flat parts and a repetitive lap based route on the hillier parts.

After our trip to Epworth Equestrian a couple of weeks ago I didn't want to punish Hayden any further and so made a call to change the event right at the last minute. So when we woke up in the morning I gave Hayden the good news - no hills!

We made our way to Colwick Country Park which was a short few kilometres away in the car. You could possibly have ran it as a nice warm-up run, but getting Hayden around a 5k parkrun route is a miracle in itself let alone running there and back!

There are a couple of different parking options, but we opted for the main parking spot next to the racecourse which gave us a nice view over the facilities and reminded me fondly of our visit to York a year or so ago.

As we were earlier than normal (which is saying something!) we head towards where all the volunteers and people who set up the event were congregated. They were actually hanging around at the finish funnel which was in a completely different place to the finish. Around 8:45 everyone started to make tracks and headed for where the start and briefings took place.

Colwick Country Park is based around a series of lakes and the course circumnavigates two of them. From the start, the route traverses around the smaller west lake in a clockwise direction. After three quarters of the way around you reach a fork which is marked as 'lap 1' pointing left and 'lap 2' pointing right. 

On the first lap, following the signs you proceed to start making your way around the much larger main lake which makes up majority of the course of the route. After eventually making your way all around the main lake you arrive back at the start where you head around the west lake again but following the arrow around to the right where the finish awaits a short while after.

Not only is the course a simple one to follow, but it's all on form paths and is flat for its entire length making it a perfect PB course. Although as Hayden and I started towards the back and the start is on a bend it did get fairly heavily congested to begin with and we walkee the first 50m or so until the pack spread out.

Running around and being close to water is incredible relaxing and the views around Colwick were quite beautiful in places. I ran at a very slow pace in an attempt to encourage Hayden to keep up. He did drop back a few times where I had to stop and wait for him to catch up but most of the time when I managed to watch him he looked to be taking in his surroundings as much I was, so I think he appreciated it more than he says he did!

As we made our way around and I was keeping an eye on the clock it came to become a possibility that Hayden might actually set a new 5k PB time. His previous best was 44.39 which was set at Rendlesham Forest last autumn, but being on track to beat that made the last few hundred meters a nervous sprint!

I finished in 332 place out of a field of 361 participants in a time of 43:11. I finished just one second behind Hayden who did indeed set a new PB for the distance..

It ended up being a great day all-round in the end. He'd no have finished in that sort of time had I stubbornly stuck to my guns. But not only did Hayden get a new PB, Gills won again on the road keeping up their good start to the new season. Onwards and upwards to the next one!