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Squerreys Winery parkrun - event 79

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On the 20th August 2022 I ran the Squerreys Winery parkrun which was the 79th event held at the venue, my 91st parkrun and 26th different course I'd attended. We are fortunate in Kent to not only have a number of different parkrun events, but events that consist of contrast and points of difference. Whether that's the hills and elevation of Lullingstone or the flat out and back routes of The Leas and Deal & Walmer you can find a wide variation of everything in-between. Of the 24 events in Kent I had done until Saturday exactly half of them and hope to visit the other half by the end of the year starting with Saturday's event at Squerreys Winery . I had been keen to attend this event ever since I'd first heard about it. Not necessarily for the run, but the fact that on the same site was a local brewery with the chance to pick up some craft beer alongside a shiny new PB. In the week leading up to the event, my friend Bartek had finally succumbed to my relentless e...

Monsal Trail parkrun - event 147

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On the 13th August 2022 I ran the Monsal Trail parkrun which was the 147th event held at the venue, my 90th parkrun and 25th different course I'd attended. When we were planning our week to the Peak District the parkrun enroute pretty much picked itself ( see my last post ), whereas the parkrun on the homeward bound journey could have been one of many. We knew that we needed to head to Liverpool from our accommodation near Buxton where we were heading via the long way home. Gillingham were playing Tranmere and so whilst we were in the reasonable vicinity it made sense at the time (event if it didn't at the full-time whistle!).  From our accommodation to the North West there are an abundance of parkruns to choose from. As there also are to the south with Trentham Gardens and the Isabel Trail coming highly recommend. The latter also having the added bonus of being one of the rare runs that start with 'i'. We could also have selected Ashbourne which is a relatively new...

Jersey Farm parkrun - event 119

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On the 6th August 2022 I ran the Jersey Farm parkrun which was the 119th event held at the venue, my 89th parkrun and 24th different course I'd attended. Completing parkrun challenges is not as easy as you might think. For example, it's actually impossible to complete a parkrun beginning with X, to get a Y you have to go to York, or hope that Yeovil bring back their elapsed event. To complete a parkrun beginning with Z you have to travel to Holland or Poland. The letter J is not much better with events few and far between, so when the opportunity to arose to tick of Jersey Farm from my parkrun list I was going to take it! With summer holidays fast approaching and nothing in the diary Stephanie and I asked the kids what they all wanted to do during the six weeks off. Each one of them said the same thing, "Alton Towers", so we formed a plan! As with most plans these days, they only really work when a parkrun is included. Or in this case, two! In order to make the most ...

Thurrock parkrun - event 285

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On the 30th July 2022 I ran the Thurrock parkrun which was the 285th event held at the venue, my 88th parkrun and 23rd different course I'd attended. My parkrun planner is not through random choice, it is carefully considered. Crafted around ticking events off the alphabet list, ticking events off in Kent and ticking off those inside the M25. I also consider the event numbers as well to ensure that I am ticking off numeric challenges such as prime numbers, Fibonacci sequence or if I'm feeling extra technical ticking off numbers from the Wilson Index (I don't actually know why the Wilson Index is called the Wilson Index or who it is named after. It is however, the maximum contiguous number of events that I've attended, in my case 3. If I run an event that is number 4, my Wilson Index will go up to 16 on account that I've run event numbers 5 through to 16 and number 4 is the gap in my sequence. Glad we cleared that one up...) The other factor that I consider and I bel...

Hoblingwell parkrun - event 197

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On the 23rd July 2022 I ran the Hoblingwell parkun which was the 198th event held at the venue, my 87th parkrun and 22nd different course I'd attended. Having not run for nearly three weeks aside from an attempted run at the Warszawa-Praga event two weeks ago I was nervous about resuming running activity. Judging when your body is ready is not an easy task, particularly when your not accustomed to niggly running injuries and are generally impatient by nature. My parkrun planner has been carefully curated to find a blended mixture between alphabet achievements, ticking events off inside the M25, completing all the parkuns in Kent and working through the list of nearest events not done yet (NENDY'S). Ironically, after my injury the next event scheduled was Hoblingwell. An event inside the M25, third on my NENDY list and inside a little pocket of parkuns which I'd already completed and made sense for me to tick off.  Indeed, I'd also been hobbling very well recently! I h...

Cyclopark parkrun - event 87

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On the 16th July 2022 I volunteered at the Cyclopark parkun which was the 87th event held at the venue, the third time I'd volunteered at the event and my 8th and 9th volunteer credits overall. As I'd injured my calf at Lullingstone two weeks ago and hadn't quite recovered at last week's event in Warsaw I gave myself some extended time off from running to give myself some time to heal and recuperate. I'm not a very patient person in general and have hated not sticking to the routine I'd spent a long time getting used to. I had severe blisters in the autumn last year which taught me trying to do something too soon can ultimately mean being out for longer than necessary, so this time around I'm more determined to do the right thing. Whilst my Wednesday wellbeing run (we get an hour extra break on Wednesdays to do something for our mental health at work) is difficult to find suitable alternatives. Parkrun Saturdays are straightforward - instead of running an e...

Warszawa-Praga parkrun - event 408

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On the 9th July 2022 I ran the Warszawa-Praga parkun which was the 408th event held at the venue, my 86th parkrun and 21st different course I'd attended. Being a parkrun obsessive means looking at any opportunity to fit in an event when there's a possibility to do so. In fact, having a parkrun event can be the difference between either going somewhere or not. In this case, we were fortunate because we had a choice between a number of cities who all had parkruns nearby. Stephanie and I for a number of years have wanted to see Coldplay, who are one of my all time favourite bands. Absolutely everyone I know who has seen them have all said that they are supremely special live. So when tickets went on sale for their Music of the Spheres World Tour we jumped at the chance of securing our tickets. The problem was, the tickets for Wembley were really expensive. By way of an experiment I compared prices for some of the other European cities on the tour and found that the prices were mu...

Lullingstone parkrun - event 305

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On the 2nd July 2022 I ran the Lullingstone parkun which was the 305th event held at the venue, my 85th parkrun and 20th different course I'd attended. When researching different parkrun events for tourism purposes there's a sublist of events that sit under the term 'must visit'. Whilst each event is unique in its own right there are certain events that have a special characteristic that make them stand out from the rest. In the case of Lullingstone it's the events reputation as one of the UKs toughest courses that make people travel from all over the country in order to conquer it's proven challenge. For me, it was the lure of the challenge, but also the fact that I needed an 'L' as part of the alphabet challenge, it's also a Kentish run I'd not completed and it was number two on my NENDY list (Nearest Event Not Done Yet). It was also a course that my Dad had previously run and so I had a subconscious goal of wanting to beat his time - which sa...

Swanley parkrun - event 34

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On the 25th June 2022 I ran the Swanley parkun which was the 34th event held at the venue, my 84th parkrun and 19th different course I'd attended. I've been to Swanley many times, mostly to the White Oak Leisure centre to enjoy the flumes and diving boards before the council built a new modern facility that features neither of those things. But until yesterday I'd never been to the park - evidently I'd been missing out. Swanley park contains an abundance of family friendly activities from a boating lake, extensive play apparatus, paddling pool and mini-railway. Stephanie had been before with the children when Oliver was younger but I was there for none of those things. Like last week at Mote Park my scheduled visit was planned to coincide with the event number matching one of the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence - this time around being the number 34. I've now completed the first 8 of the 14 numbers listed in the challenge with other events planned for later in t...

Great Lines parkrun - various

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My parkrun journey started with the Great Lines event on the 19th July 2014, it was the 41st event that the venue had held. Since then I've ran the course a further 13 times over the past 8 years, across three different iterations of the layout. I wrote my first retrospective last week when I covered the Bear Creek Greenbelt parkrun, but it was a close one between that and where the story began chronologically, in Gillingham, Kent and the Great Lines event. Mum and Dad had been introduced to parkrun by their friends Glyn and Shona and had been along to the Great Lines on a couple of occasions. On my first event I finished a respectable 163rd out of 188 runners with a time of 33:49. This was sandwiched between Glyn and Shona who were miles up the field and shortly ahead of Mum and Dad. Dad had run slower to keep mum company, he was still in relatively good shape back then! The run was on the original course which isn't too dissimilar to its current iteration. The start was to ...

Mote Park parkrun - event 3

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On the 18th June 2022 I ran the Mote Park parkun which was the 3rd event held at the venue, my 83rd parkrun and 18th different course I'd attended. I use the massively helpful 5K Achievements App for keeping record of my parkrun activities, planning future visits and accessing course event page information to understand more about various routes and how to get to the event. This resource is usually updated once a week, bringing enhancements to the app and updating the library of courses. On a recent update to the app a new purple icon appeared on the map feature and a new parkrun for Kent was born. Mote Park by all accounts had been attempting to start a parkrun for a number of years without much success. I'm not entirely sure what had changed, nor why. But I was enthused to see that a new event was coming to Kent and I was keen to attend as soon as possible. What wasn't clear however was when the inaugural event would take place. I suspected that it would start on Jubilee...

Bear Creek Greenbelt parkrun - event 63

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On the 26th March 2022 I ran the Bear Creek Greenbelt parkun which was the 63rd event held at the venue, my 71st parkrun and 9th different course I'd attended. It was also the first event that I had ran overseas. When looking back at the other venues that I had ran at the time of writing this, there was only really one place to start when looking to write a retrospective.  In 2020, I had a milestone birthday and as a gift Mum and Dad offered to take Stephanie and I to Texas so that we could watch the US Grand Prix in Austin. The original plan was to base ourselves out of San Antonio and drive up to the circuit on qualifying and race day. However, the global pandemic put pay to that idea and despite attempts to reschedule we wasn't able to go in 2021 either. Due to the booking conditions of our accommodation in San Antonio we had to rebook by April 2022, so we did. Instead of a week of sporting tourism, we had a Texas roadtrip to look forward to instead. As the itinerary change...

Greenwich parkrun - event 584

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On the 11th June 2022 I ran the Greenwich parkun which was the 584th event held at the venue, my 82nd parkrun and 17th different course I'd attended. The biggest impediment to my parkrun tourist ambitions is lack of access to a car. So I've devised a list of venues that I can access by train should a car be out of reach. I've come to a sort of agreement whereby on Friday evenings we borrow the in-laws second car and then we drop it straight back on a Saturday morning after parkrun. But with them enjoying another well earned cruise I wasn't sure whether this arrangement would work this week. So I planned to go by train to New Eltham from Gravesend and walk the short distance to Avery Hill park where the Greenwich event is held. As it worked out in the end, the prior arrangement stuck and I was left with a dilemma of sticking to my plan or choosing an alternative venue and saving Greenwich for a rainy day when no access to a car was definite. To make life easier for myse...

Queen Elizabeth parkrun - event 407

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On Saturday 4th June 2022 I ran the Queen Elizabeth parkrun , which was the 407th time that this particular event had been held. It was also my 81st parkrun at my 16th different event and was by far my most enjoyable. I enjoyed the event so much that I've found my way back to my blog to write all about it! Since I last wrote a blog post, a whole load of everything has changed. The global pandemic caused a seismic shift in how we live and go about our lives that recounting everything would take more than a blog or two. I should probably take a few minutes and re-read what I wrote back then and to see how much of it resonates. But I digress, this post is about my parkrun journey and a new obsession which I want to document for safe-keeping. My first parkrun was back in July 2014 when I ran the Great Lines event. Over the subsequent years I had run occasionally at the Great Lines and even did some touristing at Hastings and Bexley , but it wasn't until the Cyclopark event came...