Tooting Common parkrun - event 412

On the 28th June 2025 I ran the Tooting Common parkrun which was the 412th event held at the venue, my 242nd parkrun and 160th different course I'd attended.

Last August I made my way around the South Circular looking to reach Tooting Common to take part in their Saturday morning parkrun. But traffic was so bad due to an overturned car that I had to divert at the last minute and headed to Brockwell parkrun instead.

A little under a year later I nervously head around the South Circular again in a second attempt to reach the venue. My paranoid state of mind even put extra contingency time on the travel to cover all eventualities.

Which is how I found myself parked up at the Dr Johnson Avenue car park at 8am feeling a mixture of relief and foolishness. Lightening hadn't struck twice and all my panicking hadn't come to anything.

After completing my daily Wordle and Sudoku and killing the 30 minutes extra time off on my phone I got out to explore the park.

Tooting Bec Common is a reasonably large area of green space which doubles up as open space for local people to enjoy the outdoors, but features other leisure facilities such as tennis courts, athletics and on one corner, not far from the carpark is a leisure centre with a 90m swimming pool.

Being such a hub for sport in the area, it was inevitable that the parkrun was going to be well supported. Many of the neighbouring events, both Clapham Common and Wimbledon common get very large numbers and so too it seems does Tooting.

Even sat in the car at 8am there were people running by, out for walks or on their way to somewhere to work out. The park itself had groups of PT sessions with men in camouflage trousers barking out instructions and encouragement.

The course starts on the opposite end of the park to the carpark, so I made my way through the park watching as the world went on around me. I wasn't the only one heading in that direction and even at 8:45 there were large numbers warming up on readiness.

The course is one of the easiest parkruns to describe as essentially it's in the shape of a triangle. 

From the start there's a short 200 yard dash to the top most point of the triangle where you turn right. With the numbers and the relative width of the pathway here it did bunch up really quickly and was a real congested start. It didn't help with the number of people fulfilling my biggest pet peeve - if you walk parkrun, start at the back, not half way through the pack so that everyone bumps into the back of you!

After the turn, you head south in an anti-clockwise direction along the wide path that leads through the middle of the park.

At the bottom, back where the carpark is the course turns left along the base of the triangle. The surface changes here to a dusty and fine gravel path that felt almost like sand. I wasn't a huge fan of the surface here as it felt slippy and I'd imagine in winter after rain it being covered in puddles.

At the end of the base of the triangle next to the leisure centre the course turns left.again and heads back up to the north of the park and back to the top of the triangle. The surface here is different again, returning back to tarmac, but much narrower, through the trees and partially on a camber.

The triangle is them main lap, which is repeated three times. After the third time you turn right and back down the 200 yard straight to the finish line.

I came home in 458th place out of a field of 644 people in a time of 31.06. With the heat and hot weather I'm rather quite pleased with my time yesterday. Disregarding the first kilometre which was taken slowly due to the congestion and the fact that I'd started so far towards the back. On another day there's a definite fast time to be had on the course for sure 

All in all that was my 59th Greater London parkrun venue leaving just 9 left to complete the 68 current venues set. And all being well, next week another one will be ticked off too!