Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 24th June 2023 I ran the Riddlesdown parkrun which was the 577th event held at the venue, my 136th parkrun and 65th different course I'd attended. I hadn't really done my planning very well this week, if I had I'd not have picked a trail run. Running hungover is far from pleasant at any time, trail courses in the summer even more so! I knew that Hayden's football presentation night was on Friday and I should perhaps have either run locally at my home event, or repeated one that I'd done before but I was adamant that my tourist streak was going to continue, and so it did. After a late night and a few drinks, it was up at the crack of dawn with the early light coming through the loft window and waking me up, a good couple of hours earlier than I'd intended. But that's been the way of the last few weeks since the temperature has dropped and our skylights at the front of the house have been opened overnight. A short trip around the M25 and I found myself...

On the 17th June 2023 I ran the Canons Park parkrun which was the 283rd event held at the venue, my 135th parkrun and 64th different course I'd attended. At the time of writing there are 76 parkruns inside the London Orbital motorway, the M25. Before Saturday I had attended 26 of them. It is my hope and ambition to tick them all off and in order to do so I needed to complete my 27th venue, Canons park - chosen because it was also one of the few events this weekend in the area that was also hosting an event that was a prime number. I enjoy visiting events in London, because so far all the events I've completed have been at venues I'd never dream of visiting and are little green spots of calming open space in what is otherwise a concrete jungle. The other benefit of visiting different parkrun events in London is getting off and visiting other tube stations that I'd otherwise invariably miss out in normal touristing situations. Saturdays event allowed me to visit Canons P...

On the 10th June 2023 I ran the Bevendean Down parkrun which was the 313th event held at the venue, my 134th parkrun and 63rd different course I'd attended. Every now and then I get a response to my weekly message on the boys WhatsApp group when I post where I'm running on the Saturday ahead. A couple of weeks back I'd mentioned to my friend Mark that I had a tough course coming up, Bevendean Down. But when he found out where it was he told me that Brighton was too far to go for a 5k. But when I wrote my WhatsApp update I made it sound as appealing as I could and I was therefore surprised when Mark replied back for further details. What time will we be back? What time will you pick me up? Are you thinking about it then Mark? Maybe... And so I found myself with company travelling down the M23 bright and early on Saturday morning as we head down to the south coast on the hottest day of the year for one of parkruns toughest challenges. Bevendean Down parkrun is one of five pa...

On the 3rd June 2023 I ran the Bethlem Royal Hospital parkrun which was the 131st event held at the venue, my 133rd parkrun and 62nd different course I'd attended. If choosing parkruns by event numbers, or for one of the arbitrary challenges wasn't difficult enough, then adding course characteristics to the mix and you've gotten yourself another variable to add to the mix. Courses change over the seasons and a course that runs well in the summer months is a completely different beast during the winter. Bethlem Royal Hospital falls into that category - mud, glorious mud in the winter/beautiful meadows adorned with buttercups in the late spring/early summer. I'm not afraid of the mud, in fact I quite like a wet and muddy event. But when your feet are buried and you run leaving your shoe behind is the type of mud I've not quite managed to brave just yet. As my options grow increasingly smaller the more I tourist, the more chance there is that on one wet wintery day I...

On the 27th May 2023 I ran the Thames Path, Woolwich parkrun which was the 4th event held at the venue, my 132nd parkrun and 61st different course I'd attended. Last week I gave an explanation of the Wilson index and how visiting event number 30 went some way towards making progress with this 'achievement'. This week, I visited an event that was hosting a it's fourth parkrun which filled that missing gap raising my Wilson Index from a 3 to a 19. Geeky, arbitrary achievements aside it was nice to have a newly arranged parkrun fairly close by to explore. Particularly as the photograph's and reviews that had been shared online since its inception have painted a picture of the event that makes it a must see visit for any parkrun tourist. As the event was only in Woolwich I was able to get the train from Gravesend which was a nice change from the car and some of the longer distance drives I've done on a Saturday morning. From Woolwich Arsenal train station the meet...

On the 20th May 2023 I ran the Leavesden Country parkrun which was the 30th event held at the venue, my 131st parkrun and 60th different course I'd attended. Of all of the different number challenges of this strange parkrun subculture I've found myself within, the Wilson index (WI) is probably the trickiest one to achieve. Simply put, the WI is the highest numbered event you've attended. If you've never ran an inaugural event then your Wilson Index would be zero. If you run an inaugural and come back the following week your WI would be 2 etc. Even though I've ran at 131 different events my Wi is still only 3, as I've not yet ran at a number 4 . Once I do, my WI will increase to 19 as I've ran at events 5 through to 19... Make sense?  Anyway, so whenever a new event pops up it's always an opportunity for me to tick off one of my lower, unvisited parkrun event numbers - in this case event 30. Leavesden Country Park is only hour from home, just around the ...

On the 13th May 2023 I ran the Bedfont Lakes parkrun which was the 641st event held at the venue, my 130th parkrun and 59th different course I'd attended. I wasn't going to parkrun this week and was going to volunteer locally instead but it appeared that many of the closest venues had a full roster including my home parkrun Cyclopark. The reason for not running was quite simple, I'd booked to take part in my first 10k run in Seaford which took place this morning as I write this. I wasn't entirely sure that running a 5k run the day before my first 10k run was the best idea. But after not finding a volunteer spot I decided to keep the tourist streak going instead. Bedfont Lakes wasn't initially my intended venue, but after a look at my schedule and planner I decided to change things around somewhat and save my originally planned event, Rendlesham Forest for another day. I've heard good things about it and so want to enjoy that one fully. I figured Bedfont Lakes w...

On the 6th May 2023 I ran the Dunstable Downs parkrun which was the 137th event held at the venue, my 129th parkrun and 58th different course I'd attended. I'd read a blog post about Dunstable Downs parkrun via the excellent blog7t , authored by fellow parkrun tourist Steven Stockwell. The photos looked amazing and so I added the venue to the long list of venues I needed to tick off and visit. Situated on the top of an escarpment Dunstable Downs, managed by the national trust has quite stunning views across the Vale of Aylesbury. Upon my visit, it was rather cloudy and grey, and so whilst the views I had were stunning they would be even more so on a clearer day. The course is made up of a single lap which starts outside the visitors centre and is ran in an anti-clockwise direction. From the start, the course heads to the right and participants enjoy a nice downhill stretch which is soon rewarded with a steep return back uphill. The course returns back the way it started and be...

On the 29th April 2023 I ran the Roundshaw Downs parkrun which was the 666th event held at the venue, my 128th parkrun and 57th different course I'd attended. I had a conundrum this week. My parkrun planner has been arranged for a number of weeks and I knew that I had another Nelson number event lined up at Roundshaw Downs. However a post on Facebook made me question my choices and whether or not I needed to reschedule. As mentioned last week, these number challenges are completely arbitrary and have no formal recognition by anyone from parkrun. It stems from an app made by an enthusiast that has gathered a cult following and those cult followers can cause some unintended chaos. Earlier this year at Wimbledon Common parkrun, the event held their 777th running - a Nelson number and the first opportunity for participants to knowingly 'collect' a number towards the challenge. That week, over 1,000 people turned up and inundated an event that normally gets an average of 400 od...

On the 22nd April 2023 I ran the Milton Keynes parkrun which was the 610th event held at the venue, my 127th parkrun and 56th different course I'd attended. As a parkrun tourist I've had to start asking myself how far is too far for touring? Okay, so Whinlatter Forest was pretty much as far as I could have gone for a parkrun in this country but was part of a weekend trip. As was the Monsal Trail and the two I've done overseas. But on a standard Saturday how far is too far to travel, run for 30 minutes and travel back again? That was the question I pondered to myself when I discovered that Milton Keynes was hosting its 610th parkrun event, a number I needed to collect towards completing the Fibonacci challenge. These challenges are arbitrary really, a load of nonsense in the scheme of things and aren't rewarded anywhere other than a tick on a mobile app that has accumulated a few fans within the wider parkrun community. I use these numbers, along with Primes and Nelson...

On the 15th April 2023 I ran the Ifield Mill Pond parkrun which was the 111th event held at the venue, my 126th parkrun and 55th different course I'd attended. The primary reason for attending the Ifield Mill Pond parkrun was of course to collect the letter 'I' as part of the parkrun alphabeteer challenge. This means I've now collected all of the letters available from within the UK leaving me just the elusive 'Z', which necessitates a trip overseas. I coincided my visit with another Nelson number, the first of the sequence which is of course number 111. It appeared that I wasn't the only tourist with this ambition as upon turning up to the venue there was clearly a large tourist contingent notable by the number of yellow and black 'cow' buffs. The fact that there were an abundance of tourists wasn't lost on Amanda, the volunteer who gave the first timers meeting, who started by wryly asking 'so, dow have any tourists this week?' in fact...

On the 8th April 2023 I ran the South Norwood parkrun which was the 233rd event held at the venue, my 125th parkrun and 54th different course I'd attended. After the experience of Whinlatter Forest parkrun last week, this week parkrun jaunt was going to feel very much like a poor relation. However, every parkrun is a unique experience and every course has its own characteristics making them all memorable for completely different reasons. I'd chosen to run South Norwood parkrun for two reasons, one it's part of the LonDone venue list and secondly it was celebrating a Fibonacci event I'd not done yet. There was a decision to be made between this one and Alton Water, where I'd discussed the possibility of running there with Stephanie and the children in attendance before having a day out somewhere on the Suffolk coast, but Hayden had a football match and so we were led into doing what was easiest for Hayden's game. Stephanie and the two younger children came along...

On the 1st April 2023 I ran the Whinlatter Forest parkrun which was the 188th event held at the venue, my 124th parkrun and 53rd different course I'd attended. Over the course of writing this series of parkrun related blog posts there have been many explanations about how plans have evolved and changed, but this one may just be the most random. Originally I had planned to attend Chalkwell Beach, event number 89 to tick off another Prime Number. But Shaun Williams scored a 94th minute winner against Carlisle for Gillingham last week and on an air of confidence, boosted by the late drama my friend Reaso and talked about how we should attend the next game on the calendar, Barrow away.  But first I needed to talk to my Dad. My Dad and I had a been talking about Barrow away for a number of weeks as it was one of the games that Dad was desperate to go to. He may well have retired as a fully fledged football fan, but the little part of him who remembers those days recalled Barrow as a le...

On the 25th March 2023 I ran the Hackney Marshes parkrun which was the 593rd event held at the venue, my 123rd parkrun and 52nd different course I'd attended. When I was a kid, I had a t-shirt made by Nike, or Adidas - one of the two. It was black with distinct football pitch markings across it and other related football messaging. But it was the distinctive football pitch markings that would always prompt a question from people whenever I wore the t-shirt as to what they represented. I didn't think that they represented anything until someone answered the question for me. They were representing the football pitch markings at Hackney Marshes. Since then, I've been fascinated by the thought of an area of parkland devoted to over 80 football pitches and have read books, watched movies, documentaries and television programmes about football in this part of East London and its impact upon the culture of grassroots involvement in the national game. In the 1960's and 1970...

On the 18th March 2023 I ran the Raphael parkrun which was the 333rd event held at the venue, my 122nd parkrun and 51st different course I'd attended. Last week was a trip to Malling, a venue I'd ran at before and enjoyed revisiting a lovely course. But I missed the thrill of arriving at a new venue and experiencing something new and fresh. Which is why I wanted to hit the tourist trail again and start chipping away at the 50 I need to reach the magic 100 different parkrun venues. Raphael park in Romford was celebrating event 333 this week, which is another set of collectable numbers known as the Nelson challenge. These numbers are 111, 222, 333 etc and is named after Admiral Lord Nelson who allegedly had only 1 eye, 1 arm and 1 leg at the end of his life. Romford is also reasonably close to home and was one of the closest events for which I've not yet attended, despite being over the other side of the river. I was surprisingly joined by my mate Foordy who was home again f...

On the 11th March 2023 I ran the Malling parkrun which was the 296th event held at the venue, my 121st parkrun and 2nd time I'd attended the event. After a period of heavy touristing culminating in last week's 50th different event celebration in York, I found myself with a bit of a dilemma. I had planned to run at Alton Water , a scenic run around a lake near Ipswich which was celebrating its 71st event. But as usual the challenge of getting access to the car wasn't straightforward and so I was trying to decide between three events in London from which to choose from; Fulham Palace , Clapham Common or Burgess . So I put the question to the boys on our WhatsApp group and the answer from Mark was, have I done the one at Leybourne Lakes? Last April, I ran Malling parkrun, event number 249. I came 100th out of a field of 256 participants in a time of 28:17. I ran the event with Mum and haven't been able to pursuade her to join me on a parkrun ever since!  The course that...

On the 4th March 2023 I ran the York parkrun which was the 450th event held at the venue, my 120th parkrun and 50th different course I'd attended. Any UK based parkrunner with ambitions to tick off a parkrun beginning with each letter of the alphabet is likely to have a commute on their hands. Until very recently there was only one parkrun that began with Y. Pre-COVID, you had the option of Yeovil Montague or York, but the former fell by the wayside. In recent weeks Yarborough Leisure Centre has popped up doubling the opportunities available, but based In Lincolnshire it is still a sizeable effort to get there for many. My parkrun itinerary has been planned around reaching York in time to celebrate my 50th different parkrun venue. This was why, over the festive period I elected to run at events I'd already visited before as otherwise it would have meant falling out of sync. Looking at the football calendar, Gillingham were due to play Harrogate Town on March 4th. A ground I ha...

Back in the December of 2011, my eldest son Oliver was a mascot for Gillingham FC as a treat for his fifth birthday. Last weekend, history repeated itself as my youngest son Hayden experienced the same thing as a celebration of his eighth trip around the sun. Reading back through the blog I wrote after Oliver walked out on the hallowed turf of the Priestfield Stadium I was struck by the contrast between the circumstances of both boys mascot appearances. Oliver was very much living my dream for me and he was a vehicle for living out the things I wanted to do as a child but never did myself.  Oliver enjoys playing football and has had an incredible football experience growing up playing at academy level when he was younger and could have achieved huge things if his heart was in it. But he hasn't quite been bitten by the same football bug that Hayden and I have. Hayden has developed a passion for the Gills since we've been season ticket holders, culminating this season in our Le...

On the 25th February 2023 I ran the Southwark parkrun which was the 409th event held at the venue, my 119th parkrun and 49th different course I'd attended. I may well sound like a broken record, but I'm going to say it again anyway. I was going to be doing a particular parkrun this week, but couldn't due to car woes and that living in Gravesend we are incredibly lucky to have multiple routes into London via rail. It certainly feels like a rinse and repeat story of these parkrun encounters and so it was again this week when the in-laws car broke down rather than my own. As we are reliant upon borrowing their car on Saturday mornings it meant I was unable to travel to panshanger as planned and had to find an alternative via public transport. I could have just ran locally but I wanted to hit my goal of completing my 50th different venue at York next week and so had to find a plan B. Southwark parkrun ticked a few boxes, it was a prime number event (409) and it also ticked off...