Foots Cray Meadows - event 311

On the 31st January 2025 I ran the Foots Cray parkrun which was the 311th event held at the venue, my 274th parkrun and 2nd time I'd attended the venue.

February is promising to be a busy month. Gillingham are almost Tuesday night, Saturday night back to back for the full month. The week they aren't, I'm taking Hayden to White Hart Lane as a treat. I've also got Uncle Paul's funeral in the West Midlands and so lots of miles on the road. When Foordy asked me what parkrun I was visiting and would I fancy something close by it didn't take me much convincing.

Originally I had Dereham in the diary as it was running event 80, which I needed for my Wilson Index, but the thought of a two hour drive there and another two hours back felt unpalatable. So instead I had the enjoyment of looking up closer events that I'd already visited and one that enabled me to get Foordy home in time for a shift at Bluewater later in the day.

I last ran Foots Cray Meadows on a warm May morning in 2022, which was a rare run with my friend Aimee. The course was ran on their summer layout and so when I saw Foots Cray Meadows was on, and running an available event number I jumped at the chance as I knew that the winter course was very much in season.

The summer course take primarily through the middle of the meadows and is taken all on grass on a multiple lap course. Sometimes under extreme weather the course can be fully under water, but despite the recent rains there wasn't any notable flooding that I could see, aside from the River Cray being notably higher.

Both courses have different starting and finishing positions. The summer course starts and finishes near the playground at the western end of the meadows. The winter course is further south and closer to the main road that runs parallel to the meadows.

The winter course as we were running it consisted of a loop around the field in which the start and finish area were located. The field was on an incline so there were plenty of early undulates as we made our ways around for the first loop. The field was divided into two by a line of trees and that ran the same direction as the gradient making a very up and down starting kilometre. Being on grass which was soft, muddy and potholed wasn't the most comfortable experience either.

After the field had been successfully circumnavigated the course went off grass and was onto the tarmac path that runs through the middle of the meadows. This path ran downhill into the valley and over a bridge from which beneath ran the River Cray.

Once the bridge had been crossed the course diverted onto a gravel path which ran up the other side of the valley through the woods into a long out and back section.

It was here, whilst trudging up hill that I regretted my Saturday morning life choices and slowed down to walk whilst I contemplated my love/hate affair with running.

Coming back and running downhill put a smile on my face again and everything was right once more with the world and my Saturday morning recreation decisions.

At the bottom of the hill I recognised Dame Kelly Holmes who was was volunteering as a parkwalker for the day. She is a wonderful ambassador for parkrun and I've been following her participation on social media as it was the third time I'd been at an event where she was also in attendance! I've yet to grab a selfie though, as on this occasion we needed to get back for Foordy to start work. Fingers crossed for number 4!

The rest of the course is ran in mirror image of the way out. Running back over the bridge and uphill to the field where you run back the way you came in an opposite direction to the outward leg.

I finished in 39th place out of a field of 69 participants in a time of 32:17. For context, I completed the summer course, which was much flatter in a time of 29:28!

Lots to do to get back to that level of athleticism!