Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 29th October 2022 I ran the Charlton parkrun which was the 55th event held at the venue, my 101st parkrun and 35th different course I'd attended. In and around trying to get the parkrun venues in Kent ticked off, I've been simultaneously trying to work my way through my local parkruns that I've not done yet, in particular those that sit either side of the A2 corridor. One of those such runs is Charlton, which I planned to run to coincide with event number 55, which is one of the remaining Fibonacci sequence numbers I am still yet to do. Prior to the run, on the Thursday night watching the climax of the latest Stranger Things series on Netflix I was stretching my feet out and felt a bit of a twinge in the big toe of my right foot. I didn't think anything of it, until the next morning when walking down the stairs was a lot more painful than it should have been. As I was off work on a days leave and had planned to visit Whitstable for a stroll along the coastal pat...

On the 22nd October 2022 I ran the Bushy parkrun which was the 899th event held at the venue, my 100th parkrun and 34th different course I'd attended. Not to be confused with the town in Hertfordshire, Bushy park lies in South West London - a stones throw away from Hampton Court Palace. It is in fact a Royal Park, one of eight in London and is the second largest of them all. It's famous for its herds of red and fallow deer which roam freely across the park itself. In 2004 a man named Paul Sinton-Hewitt arranged a 5k running event at the park between running friends that was known as the Bushy Time Trial. The event was then replicated at Wimbledon Common three years later and further Time Trials soon followed. These events were then renamed to parkrun and a global initiative was born. As it was my 100th parkrun, what better way to celebrate my centenary than a pilgrimage to the place where it all started? Knowing that it was my 100th event and the next official parkrun mileston...

On the 15th October 2022 I walked the Cyclopark parkrun which was the 100th event held at the venue and my 99th parkrun event overall. I had planned to run the Royal Tunbridge Wells parkrun and keep up my chain of tourist events going, but a request to Stephanie from the Cyclopark run director changed my mind and my schedule has now been rewritten. I hadn't planned on walking either, but a combination of circumstances dictated otherwise. Being my local event I knew that the centenary milestone was fast approaching for the Cyclopark and I should have drawn my schedule up around it. But I had wanted to attend Royal Tonbridge Wells on account of theirs being a prime number event as well as the R that I am still missing as part of the alphabeteer challenge. These challenges are easily addictive and interfere with rational thought, hence my decision to skip Cycloparks centennial celebrations. However, Hayden and Phoebe have swimming lessons on Tuesday at the same place as Sarahs childr...

On the 8th October 2022 I ran the Walmer and Deal Seafront parkrun which was the 144th event held at the venue, my 98th parkrun and 33rd different course I'd attended. After two recent visits to the Kent Coast made even better by the weather, you'd forgive me for being cautious on betting on a hattrick. But as it was, I headed to another Kent venue at the seaside with amazing blue skies, no wind and spring like temperatures. The Walmer and Deal Seafront venue is probably the furthest venue in Kent to reach via my house as there isnt a direct route. So I set off at 7:20 with the sun low in the sky directly ahead of me as I head east along the M2 and A2 towards Dover.  I had never visited Walmer or Deal and so part of the appeal for me in ticking off all the parkruns in Kent is visiting places I'd never been before and exploring my home county. I had planned this run with the intention of ticking off another Fibonacci number (144), but hadn't realised the event was celeb...

On the 1st October 2022 I ran The Leas parkrun which was the 86th event held at the venue, my 97th parkrun and 32nd different course I'd attended. Working my way around the parkrun venues of Kent has left me at the mercy of the weather. Planning when to run specific events has been combining a number of variables including event numbers, event types and location. But it's also meant autumnal visits to the coast where wind conditions could potentially be tricky making for some difficult runs. I love the sea and the coast in all its seasons so have no concerns about running into a biting, near gale force headwind. In fact, I am actually relishing it. On the Friday night before I was due to run The Leas parkrun we went into town for my niece's 16th birthday meal. It was tipping down with rain and the wind was blowing strongly. I tried to remember the last wet parkrun I'd ran and struggled to recall anything other than a few soaking wet Cyclopark events towards the end of ...

On the 24th September 2022 I ran the Kingdom parkrun which was the 107th event held at the venue, my 96th parkrun and 31st different course I'd attended. This week I was due to run the Folkestone parkrun event, but was changed as detailed in my last update . This swap in the schedule was not only fortunate due to the great weather at Folkestone last week but meant that I could run Kingdoms 107th event and tick a prime number off in the process. Not sure I have done my planning well enough if things like this accidentally happen as they should certainly happen by design. Attempting to tick off parkruns by letters of the alphabet might seem a little obsessive to the outsider. But my argument is that without these obsessive type of interests I'd never have the experience of running events like Kingdom which are absolute gems in the parkrun event portfolio. And my experience of running these events enhances my appreciation for the organisation and for those who volunteer each week...

On the 17th September 2022 I ran the Folkestone parkrun which was the 350th event held at the venue, my 95th parkrun and 30th different course I'd attended. As a one car family I've only been able to tour this year due to an arrangement of convenience we've established with my in-laws. Every Friday we've driven off to the in-laws house, picked up my father-in-law's car and Stephanie has used that to perform taxi services for the children on Saturday mornings whilst I've used our car to drive to my various parkrun venues. I had planned to run Kingdom parkrun this week where I was looking to tick off my 'K' and meet up with Jennie and Tom Grimes who I'd last met up with at East Grinstead , but due to a late change of circumstances I had to swap plans around and run Folkestone this week and Kingdom next. Due to my father-in-law having a fishing trip, he needed his car this week and with Folkestone easily accessible by public transport it made sense to ...

On the 10th September 2022 I ran the Nonsuch parkrun which was the 501st event held at the venue, my 94th parkrun and 29th different course I'd attended. On the Thursday before parkrun the world received the news that our Queen, Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II had passed away at the age of 96. The UK would be in a period of national mourning and multiple sporting events had been cancelled as a mark of respect, including all football matches across every level, including grassroots. Fortunately the parkrun organisation decided against a blanket cancellation policy and left it to landowners and local representatives to determine the outcome on an event by event basis. There were inevitably multiple cancellations as courses such as Dartford, a community asset was using the bandstand as a location to receive floral tributes and wouldn't be able to run safely. I had planned to run Nonsuch parkrun, chasing the letter N to help complete my goal of running a different parkrun for ever...

On the 3rd September 2022 I ran the Pegwell Bay parkrun which was the 414th event held at the venue, my 93rd parkrun and 28th different course I'd attended. Options for the letter P are fairly few and far between from where I live, and with the dual aim of completing all the parkruns in Kent alongside the parkrun alphabet, Pegwell Bay was the perfect venue that fulfilled both criteria. Research had told me that the course was going to be flat and fast, and rumours of the course being slightly short of the official 5k required were plentiful online across various parkrun tourism groups on Facebook. I'm admittedly not a fast runner and wouldn't consider myself anyway athletic. I started parkrun with times of around 34-36 minutes and it has taken a lot of effort to get times down to a level I'm starting to feel pride in. My quickest ever parkrun time was registered earlier this year at the Cyclopark event which was the culmination in many weeks of repeated visits and slow...

On the 27th August 2022 I ran the East Grinstead parkrun which was the 189th event held at the venue, my 92nd parkrun and 27th different course I'd attended. The last time I visited East Grinstead was to pay a visit to my Nan who was in hospital having her wedding finger surgically removed. She was on a ward of females having a variety of cosmetic procedures. My grandfather, fondly know as Gramps teased the patients that were in the ward with her. Pointing to a lady who had a rather excessive bossum he said 'she's here to have her boobs reduced'. Looking around and pointing to a woman on the other side of the ward he said 'and she's having hers made bigger'. As I'm sliding down my chair getting redder and redder he says 'they should go in together, swap and save a few bob'. More than twenty-five years have passed since that moment and I finally felt comfortable returning to East Grinstead without being recognised. I needed to collect an 'E...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...