Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 27th December 2025 I ran the Great Dunmow parkrun which was the 303rd event held at the venue, my 268th parkrun and 184th different course I'd attended. 2025 has been another year of remarkable parkrun activities. I missed three weekends, one where I was injured and twice through supporting Stephanie through her Gall Stone problems. Its not lost on me that although I supported her for two weekends out of 52, without her support in letting me do my thing I literally wouldn't be able to do what I do. Her selflessness in taking the children to their clubs on a Saturday morning means she too has an early start to her weekend and in my mine, not nearly as an enjoyable one. But she does meet her sister for breakfast at a local cafe for a weekly catch-up so it's not all parental duty. Of all those weeks attendance in 2025, I never repeated a week at the same venue, but I did manage to revisit three events, including another visit to my 'home' parkrun at Cyclopark, ...

On the 25th December 2025 I ran the Maidstone River Park parkrun which was the 593rd event held at the venue, my 267th parkrun and the second time I'd visited the event. In recent years it has been a new tradition to attend parkrun on Christmas Day to get the festivities under way. This is normally attended at Great Lines, but as I'd racked up a list of 99 different parkrun events without repeat I had to find somewhere else to keep the run going and hit the centenary figure. We may have an abundance of parkrun venues close by to Gravesend, but not everyone runs a Christmas Day event and so the pickings were a few far and between. I had to also consider that it wasn't Great Lines that would upset my tourist streak, Dartford, Bexley and Leybourne Lakes would also see my streak reset. Fortunately Maidstone River Park were running, and as I hadn't visited the event since 2022 my tourist streak was well protected. It was also a venue that I hadn't blogged about before, ...

On the 20th December 2025 I ran the Lytham Hall parkrun which was the 295th event held at the venue, my 266th parkrun and 183rd different course I'd attended. Attempting to watch all of Gillingham Football clubs league games across a football season is not without challenge. League two is a tough league with lots of northern based sides which equates to expense both in time and finances. This would be hard enough as it is for majority of people without factoring the extra parameter of parkrun. Last season I visited Fleetwood Town for the very first time, combining it with a weekend break in Blackpool and visited both the ground and the local parkrun along Fleetwood Promenade. That was back in August and it was freezing cold and blowing a gale during the height of summer so goodness knows what December was going to be like! With that in mind my original intention was to travel part distance on Friday and stop over somewhere in the north west, Wigan or Preston where travelling dista...