parkrun Report – Saturday 23rd December 2017

Bristol & West club members had departed to all parts by Saturday morning and visited twenty-seven parkrun courses to take part in twenty-six parkruns. As many were visiting courses for the first time and were slowed down by various elaborate and choreographed fancy dress performances results are difficult to assess.

Highlights included:

• A first place for Matt BATTENSBY at Ashton Court with a time of 17:49.
• A six second PB with a time of 22:04 for Nicola OLDROYD at Bradford.
• A second place for Andrew WATT at Eastville in a time of 17:33.
• Best time of the day, 16:39 by Maciej BIALOGONSKI, who was the first finisher at Chipping Sodbury, with Isobel MEDCROFT finishing as second lady at the same venue in 23:13.
• Lucy BIRD and Helen SHARPE finishing as first females at Clare Castle and Conkers respectively,
• Fiona MARKS earning the Performance of the Week by finishing second and first female at Barnstaple in a PB time of 18:02.
• Dan SCHOFIELD running his one hundredth parkrun at Erddig, a new location to this column, which is in North Wales, near Wrexham.

The question raised in the first sentence of this report is answered by Steve GRANT reporting with a rather unfortunate tale from the North West.

“South Manchester is full of parkruns and today’s visit was to Sale Water Park. The RD and all the kit got stuck on the motorway, so it was cancelled, but rather than do a helter-skelter rush to another parkrun I ran the course anyway.  I wasn’t the only one, so I had Santas and reindeer to help me follow the correct route.

Like all the parkruns in the area it’s pretty flat with a few ramps up and down.  Where I guess the start and finish would have been, is a tarmac road under tree cover before you go up a ramp on to the footpath on the side of the River Mersey. You follow the meandering Mersey for a fair way on a rough path – think of Ashton Court at the top end. Then it’s up another ramp and left on to tarmac and path looping round the bottom of the lake to the turning point. The turning point is a 180° turn on to a higher path that would have eased any contraflow congestion if there was any. After a few 100m you re-join the original route and head home.

It’s a pleasant enough route and different from the alternatives of track/park at Stretford and grass at Wythenshawe Park both of which are about a mile away. “