Great Notley parkrun - event 490

On the 11th January 2025 I ran the Great Notley parkrun which was the 490th event held at the venue, my 220th parkrun and 138th different course I'd attended.

On New Year's Day Foordy and I ran the Chelmsford parkrun. At most events there is a tarpaulin which visitors use to place coats and bags and suchlike whilst the event takes place. This feature of a parkrun event is caused the 'tarp of trust' and after the Chelmsford event Foordy collected his coat unaware that his front door key had somehow fallen out along the way 

He contacted the volunteer team and as luck would have it, they'd found his set of keys and so he arranged to pick them up, but me being me had to make things difficult and so something relatively straightforward ended up being something not quite so.

Essentially I was looking to protect my tourist streak, running Chelmsford parkrun again two weeks after I'd visited would have reset my tourist streak from 58 to 2. I'd recently cut it from 76 down to 56 after revisiting Great Lines again but to reset it down to two was too big a loss.

We discussed dropping Foordy off in Chelmsford whilst I went off somewhere nearby and run another event. I suggested not running for the week and volunteering at Chelmsford instead which would have been perfectly fine but Foordy didn't want me missing out on a run due to his mistake (his words not mine).

Eventually we hatched a plan. We'd stop by Chelmsford on our way to Great Notley which was a further 20 minutes deeper into Essex. The Chelmsford event team arrive early on Saturday morning to set up the event and so the pre-course check. So timing was in our favour.

As it was the course team were in place a lot earlier as the weather conditions dictated an early inspection. Temperatures were again sub-zero, even colder than the week before. There was plenty of ice on the ground and in and around Chelmsford lay a thick blanket of dog so it wasn't just Chelmsford in danger the worry was we'd pick up Foordys key, get to Great Notley and they'd be off too.

But the plan went without a hitch, arriving on time at Chelmsford, picking up the key and arriving at Great Notley Country park with plenty of time to spare.

Usually I like to have a walk around upon arrival and take in the surroundings with a few photographs for the Facebook tourism group but it was far too cold for that! I managed to get a few quick shots of the area around the start line quickly which was covered in thick white ice and actually quite beautiful.

The course was described as having a hill at the start of the second lap but from.where we were stood at the start line we couldn't see anywhere that might match the description. In fact, I was slightly disoriented anyway as the start didn't appear to correlate to the map that was displayed on the course page on the website.

Apparently we were running an alternative two-lap course due to the weather conditions, which was relayed to us during the pre-run briefing. We were also advised to take care in places whilst on the course as there were plenty of puddles that had iced over in the sub-zero temperatures.

With the weather conditions the two lap run around Great Notley Country park was quite special. Covered in a blanket of white, with a thick mist surrounding everything made for a quite atmospheric occasion. The route was on a variety of different surfaces, all firm underfoot with the frozen temperatures.turnong some of the more muddier areas into solid ground.

I'd imagine in other weeks some of the course could well be quite muddy, but we had the luck of the draw in our favour. Although there was some areas which carried alternative peril in the form of ice. But where pathways might have contained icy patches there was plenty of grass either side to avoid the worse or them.

The whole course was flat and the mysterious hill was nowhere to be found. I later took my Strava map and compared it with the map as shown on the parkrun course page and there is a fairly.obvioua difference between the two variations of the course. What made the hill disappear was the fog and I'm assuming it would have been in full view had we visited on a clearer day.

Another reason to revisit though, that's for sure!

I finished in 128th position out of a field of 246 participants in a time of 30:23.

It was by far the coldest parkrun I've done to date. Margate, Tonbridge and the previous week at Black Park were all memorable events ran in the freezing cold, but Great Notley absolutely topped the lot!