So not sure if I should post this here or the confessions thread.
Some background Mrs BadAsh is due to have our 3rd child on 11th July. She’d wanted the 2 of us to have a weekend away in March, flying somewhere, but we (I?) didn’t get round to organising it. After having a bit of a break she’s back at parkrun, often being being the parkwalker or tailwalker, or going round with them. She’d worked out that if we did every single parkrun she’d reach her 100 milestone on 8th July, 3 days before her due date, so this became a bit of a goal. One which is going to be very touch and go. Oh and we were due to go on a Norwegian cruise in 2020 for my 40th, but COVID came.
Living 5 minutes from our local, neither of us are really tourists, I’ve done 165 parkruns, of which 136 are at my local one and 13 at my parents’ local one. In total I’ve done 11 locations and 2 countries.
I recently read about the Scandinavian parkruns changing the special days for their bonus runs. On the UK we do ours on Xmas day, which is very well attended. I believe they were doing it on 24th or 25th December, but not so well attended. Now Norway do 1st May, Finland Ascension Day (which this year 18th May), Denmark 5th June & Sweden 6th June. See Additional parkrun Days - parkrun Volunteers for more details.
I made an off the cuff comment to Mrs BadAsh that her challenge would be easier if we went a did Norway’s bonus run on 1st May, no time needed off work as it’s also on our bank holiday (this year), and rather surprisingly yes seemed rather keen.
And that’s how I ended up doing Stavanger parkrun yesterday. 42 of us completed it of which 27 were first timers. It would appear the locals had better things to do on their labour day holiday 
The Oslo runs seemed a lot more popular.
Flew out Sunday morning and back on Monday evening. Quite a few of the flight had the same agenda, but were experienced tourists. It’s exposed us to a whole different parkrun community, we were chatting to people who’d done 100+ locations, 10 countries, completed Alphabet challenges, etc. We felt a lot less weird talking to them, than we did explaining to friends and family about our one night trip to Norway!
The parkrun itself was at a lovely location around a lake for 3km (flat), but then there was a brutal climb, going up 40m over 400m at it’s worst, running round a building (I was later told it was a water tower). The weather was forecast to be awful on Monday morning, having been lovely on Sunday, but in fact it was pretty kind and was just a refreshing drizzle. It did mean the views were rubbish at the top of the hill mountain.
Ok, so on the performance. Checking out the winning times of the last couple of runs, around 20:30 and 21:30, I was thinking that a 1st place may be possible, depending on who turned up. Getting the excuses in: Had an awful nights sleep (almost never sleep well if not in my own bed, room was roasting, and rain during the night resulted in loud, annoying dripping noises), breakfast at hotel was only really available before the run and was very nice, went back for thirds, travelling light so didn’t take super shoes (thought to be fair no-one was wearing them), and most importantly I’m bloody rubbish with hills. I could really have done with a loo stop (I mentioned he breakfast), but with it being a public holiday the cafe was shut.
Did the first km in about 3:40, at this point one guy was off the front, 2 much younger Polish chaps were just ahead and I was shoulder to shoulder with a young lady, but it was already starting to feel hard and I could tell they were all going to handle the hill much better than me. Slowed slightly over the next couple of km and then the hill came, the wheels completely fell off and it was all I could manage not to walk. Trudged over the line in 20:40 for 5th, about 40s behind 4th and 70s ahead of 6th. The winner (45-49 from West 4 Harriers) did an 18:28.
Caught back up with Mrs BadAsh at around the 3km mark and got to experience the hill for a 2nd time, but this time I was walking, which was much more pleasant. Shame about the weather as I’m sure the views would have been great at the top.