Wimbledon Common parkrun - event 883

On the 1st March 2025 I ran the Wimbledon Common parkrun which was the 883rd event held at the venue, my 226th parkrun and 144th different course I'd attended.

After the glamour of last week and a trip to Scotland for my first venue north of the border it was back to bread and butter tourism this week with a trip to south London and Wimbledon Common parkrun.

Over the course of my travels I've grown to know the roads in and around the capital more intimately and have grown to either love or hate certain routes. The south circular can be filled quite clearly in the box marked 'bin'. Coming off the A2 at Eltham and starting the long slow crawl, mostly at 20mph is never an enjoyable experience.

The parkrun course page for Wimbledon Common warns against driving and advises to visit via public transport. Tourism advice via Facebook suggested that the car park was fairly large, but the event is popular and so arriving early was well advised.

Which is all well and good until you hit the south circular. I'd planned my journey with what I thought was a sufficient buffer of time, but my world and the reality of the worlds worst road were still evidently far apart.

I did actually consider public transport for at least part of the journey. I could have traveled to Greenwich and parked next to North Greenwich Tube station and got footed it across via rail but having some the journey a couple of times for football it didn't strike me as a particularly appealing alternative.

I'd planned to arrive at 8;20, accounting for traffic which would actually see me arriving at 8;30? But instead I arrived at the carpark at 8:40 with the anxious feeling of dread that I'd not be able to park and that I was insufficiently armed with a plan B

Either the carpark faries were in my favour, or I was worrying unduly, but I managed to snatch one of the final few parking spaces available. It was in the world's largest and deepest puddle, meaning that my feet were drenched when I got out of the car but that was just a sign of things to come.

Some parkruns are relaxed affairs, some are run like a military exercise with everything starting on the dot. Wimbledon Common can be classified on the very relaxed side of the spectrum. All of the formal meetings took place and took place in the right order but not necessarily sticking to the formal timing arrangements. Which is fine, I wasn't in a hurry, but something to consider of time isn't in your favour.

Once the first timers meeting had taken place, plus the race briefing and we'd walked the 200m or to the start, the clock was ticking 9;15. 

I suppose you could say it was a useful acclimatisation exercise on my behalf coming from a Scottish event which started at 9:30 back to England and our usual 9 o'clock start. Having this one start half way between helped soften the blow.

Wimbledon Common parkrun is a two and a bit laps course around part of the eastern end of the common. The public space is vast and made up of multiple types of recreational.areas, including woodland which is where the parkrun event takes place.

I did suspect beforehand that the course might well be soft underfoot, but I was led into a false sense of security as the first 1km of the route was on fairly established pathways and firm underfoot. There was a little mud around the periphery of the pathways and the grass area where the meeting and finish line sits, but after a kilometer of reasonable running things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

The second kilometer can only really be described as carnage. From firm paths to mud bath almost in an instance wasn't a pleasant surprise. Well, at least not at first, but once you've splash landed into your first ankle deep puddle you may as well embrace it for what it is.

I weaved in and around trees and bushes, to the right of the path and the left all in search of firm footing. I slipped and almost fell but swung my arms to catch my balance and accidentally punched the man who was running past me on the head.

Where other runners were being too slow and cautious, I overtook them by jumping through a puddle and started to take more risks the wetter and muddier I got. Why skip over a puddle when you couldn't get any wetter than you already were?

I quite enjoy conditions like that, but have still been suffering from a leg injury which I can't really explain, except to say it can be very uncomfortable and I'm awaiting a physio appointment so hopefully can get to the bottom of it all. But it was a more natural form of problem which got too much for me on my second lap, I desperately needed to pee!

Fortunately in the woodland, despite the number of participants there is always a place for a natural bathroom and that's what I was forced to do on my second lap. Heading slightly deeper into the woods and finding some relief allowed me to rejoin in slightly more comfort for the last part of the course and the little dog leg to the finish once the second lap had been successfully complete.

I finished in 264th place out of a field of 366 participants in a time of 33:24. Even without a stop to pee the final time would have been a slow one on.account of the muddy conditions which were quite tough going in places.

It also meant that my 50th Greater London venue was a memorable one, even if it was for the mud and puddles!