Wisbech parkrun - event 92

On the 14th June 2025 I ran the Wisbech parkrun which was the 92nd event held at the venue, my 240th parkrun and 158th different course I'd attended.

Catton parkrun in Norwich, according to Google maps is a 2 hour and 15 minutes drive away from my house. According to my 5k planning app this is the 150th closest event to where I live. The question is therefore how far is acceptable to travel just to partake in a free Saturday morning 5k run, considering the abundance of choices within my own local area?

My justification for visiting Wisbech for parkrun was a flimsy one. To my knowledge the event wasn't likely to be one of those spectacular events that every parlrunner needs to visit. But it was celebrating it's 92nd event and I needed to visit a parkrun with that event number, particularly if I wanted to achieve my goal of eventually raising my Wilson Index up to 100.

If I was feeling slightly guilty for the unnecessary stretch of my carbon footprint, fate had its own way of slapping me on the knuckles.

I arranged my route and arrival time for 8:30 to allow me some wiggle Room enroute. This has helped me on occasions, like Lullingstone when I barely made it to the start on time and Tooting Common where I didn't make it at all, but had sufficient time to arrange and arrive at a plan B.

Initially all was going rather well. The motorway stretch around the M25 and up the M11 was it's standard motorway self. After coming off north of Cambridge and heading cross-country via the A14 I was having a ball.

The flat expansive of Cambridgeshire is a place thats relatively unexplored by myself, and so driving through the rural agricultural farmlands on a warm Saturday morning was quite a pleasant experience. Navigating villages and Hamlets that I'd never been to before or recognising their names was a reminder of why I enjoy getting up on a Saturday morning and seeing parts of the country I'd never otherwise see.

Until I arrived at a place called Mepal on the A142. I ignored the first 'road closed ahead' sign on the roundabout as I was following Google maps and it had never let me down before. A couple of miles later I arrived at the barricade with nowhere else to go.

Someone had obviously forgotten to tell Google about the closed road and so I pulled over and attempted to use the social features of the app to tell them myself but my phone was evidently having some sort of brain fart and whatever I tried turned to cheese.

Despite my app malfunction and downloading Waze as an alternative, which proved to be more complicated than it ever needed to be I decided I was wasting valuable time and thought to head back the way I came and take another turn off further back. My thinking was that Google would naturally kick in and advise me.back on the appropriate non-closed route ahead.

That too ended up in disaster as whichever way I went Google would lead me back again to the road closed ahead sign, evidently completely uninformed of the blockage ahead of me.

Eventually after many miles heading in the opposite direction Google managed to catch up and I was sent on a diversion via Ely and my once comfortable arrival time of 8:22 had turned to 8:50. If that wasn't frustrating enough, I got caught behind an articulated lorry and so the roads I had been.admiring and enjoying earlier had evolved into a form of slow torture. Watching the estimated arrival time slip minute by minute as I trundled along at 30 miles an hour on roads with a national speed limit 

Eventually I managed to pull off a safe and comfortable passing maneuver on the lorry and with the open road ahead of me avoided any further delays. The new arrival time.was 8:56 which was extremely tight, considering I'm didn't know the area, where to park, how far the start line was and I also really needed to pee!

As Google evidently was not my friend today l decided to ignore what it was telling me on arrival at Wisbech. Rather than heading around to the north of the park I took a route I could see on the map to the south instead. It was a gamble that paid off as I managed to find a space right outside a main gate on the road right outside the park itself. Even better was the view of the toilet block and just beyond that the familiar sight of a gathering of purple vested volunteers.

Despite the latest of arrivals I still managed to make the start, have a pee and listen in on the race briefing, even if I did miss the first timers speech. But I hadn't been stood there for very long until we were off on our way.

The course comprises of four laps around the park with a central section that takes you out to the perimeter to start the first lap and brings you back to the finish after the fourth. The lap itself is a mazy run around the perimeter of the park on tarmac paths and is pancake flat.

Majority of the lap is under the cover of trees, so would be good to do on a hot sunny day. On my visit it was certainly warm, but it was overcast and there was even a bit of rain at a couple of points around the course.

As with any multiple lap parkruns.coirse I spend majority of the run wondering whether I'd ran too many laps or still had another two to go - but despite the mental mind games I made my way to the finish line at the appropriate time coming home in 59th place out of a field of 153 participants in a time of 29:49 which was one of my fastest times this year.

If I'd been with friends or family I'd likely have made a day of it and explored the town or headed somewhere else. But as I was on my own I made my way home, stopping at McDonald's for some food on a retail park just outside of Ely.

The route home was thankfully a different one, so no road closures to contend with. It was actually another pleasant trip back, with a highlight passing a new parkrun venue that started a few weeks ago at Ben's Yard on the outskirts of Ely. One that I've popped on my plan - that Wilson Index won't fill itself will it?