My dad’s one of the furious ones. Tbh, I haven’t followed this so I didn’t really know what he was getting upset about. He’s 80 and he got back into running post-lockdown and he’s loved duking it out with the other 75+ runners to get the top spot at Bushy or Richmond Park. The stats really motivated him and meant something. He’s continued doing a 5k but is boycotting PR. I thought it was a bit ott but I kind of get his point now.
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Rocked up to test my knee. Didn’t look at my watch until the end, just went easy on feel.
Knee held up but we’ll see later. It did look a lot less angry this morning and I covered it with two big plasters, so not to scare the children 
23.51 on my watch
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I did the course check for ours and then ran it. Started at a steady pace and picked it up on the way back, was surprised to see I was only about 12 seconds off my PB for it and it was still a bit soft in places.
Not sure what’s going on, felt terrible last night on my run yet that wasn’t bad despite going a bit harder 
About 21:22.
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Our local one was cancelled today as Race For Life were using the park, so had a rare UK tour, taking in Quakers Walk in Devizes.
Was feeling pretty rubbish so wasn’t planning on pushing it (reflected by choice of footwear) but in the end did a pretty hard effort for 20:20. It was 3.x laps on on a mixture of hard trails, muddy in places and tarmac. Course was pretty congested with an out and back section with lots of near misses with the oncoming overtakers.
At the end I was so frazzled I immediately hung the finisher token on the board without scanning it. Fortunately a very friendly scammer approached me to point it out.
One chap was even more out of it than me, completely missed 4 people cheering and calling out his name before the finish and proceeds to run straight past it and started a 4th lap, before someone ran after him.
Quite a few people dressed up in Star Wars stuff/carrying light sabres including one bloke dressed as Princess Leia in the Jabba the Hut scene. He was lucky it was a relatively warm morning! They also had the music blasting out.
Had to dash back as at midday I was chaperoning 3 kids round the Pretty Mudder, which was 5k. Fortunately the obstacles weren’t for the adults.
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Well that was a disaster! Quite a large turnout at Fælledparken, which had the most impressive start up area I’ve seen thanks to the fan area setup for the football final later today at the stadium just over the road.
Nobody was going particularly fast at the start and I found myself in 2nd running 3:45/km. This is a very flat course, so potentially very quick, only thing going against it is the ground is like a very fine gravel. There were white chalk arrows on the route. I’d seen them being drawn as we arrived and the RD thanked the course marker, along with ever my other volunteer, individually during the briefing. The leader took a very sharp right and I followed, I was concerned but could see an arrow, we then proceeded to follow a number of tight turns (all with arrows) which started to raise alarm bells as I’d done the course before 5 years ago and didn’t recall it being that difficult to follow. When I could see a load of slower runners on the other side of the lake and turned round to see no one behind me I realised we’d make a mistake. There must have been marking from another event.
My first lap was 2.2km rather than 1.6km, I treated that as a warmup and then completed another 3 correct laps so I had done the entire proper course.
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I did it last year, was a lovely park and atmosphere but that fine gravel was sapping.
Luckily I wasn’t running that fast and people in front knew the route!
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Spot the Pom 
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Sat in the cafe for post parkrun coffee while those of you in the UK are mid run. An uneventful one at Amager Strandpark today. Studied the course in detail but I was nowhere near the lead today, I think 8th in about 19:32. Was hoping for a little better on the very flat tarmac course but it’s probably a fair reflection of current fitness.
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Nice.All going as normal for us but then LO got a stitch at 3km, so we waited for Mum, jogged around with her and ended up with a 26.17 on my watch
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Back on the tourist trail today at Ipswich, nice little 2 lapper round a park, mostly trail and grass and must have been a bit boggy over winter.
Ended up going a bit faster than I’d planned 
and a sprint finish got me 20:59 and 12th overall.
Also bagged the letter I although I suspect Kim Jong Sinton-Hewitt and his HQ directorate are trying to get rid of town names so half expect it to change to Chantry Park one day.
That only leaves me needing the letter U to finish the alphabet
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Tourism in general and all the little challenges can’t align with their core aim of trying to get inactive people down to their local park on a Saturday morning. I just think if they continue to alienate the core running community they will lose a substantial part of their volunteer base.
There is a relatively new event down the road from us, named itself after the cycleway that makes most of the route rather than the town it is in. As a result the name starts with a Q and gets quite a lot of tourists, don’t know if that was deliberate.
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To think they started out as time trial events, but clearly that doesn’t fit in modern woke society or get you a knighthood 
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As I understand it the guidance now is to name the events after the closest named area / most detailed location, and avoid names of towns/cities. So it sounds like they have followed the policy.
Obviously when it first stated (excluding London) they probably only envisioned one event per town, but that very soon wasn’t sufficient.
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Looks the parkrun tourism with the bonus day in the Netherlands at the end of May (Monday 20th May) with a new event starting with a Z is causing some issues. While that event isn’t doing the bonus event many people planning to attend it in on the Saturday.
The local council gave them a permit for 150 people. This Saturday gone they had 10 finishers at their 18th event. They are expecting anywhere from 150 to 500 on Saturday 18th.
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One of my mates moved to Holland and got pretty involved with park run in a place called Kagerzoom, may even have helped set it up.
On Strava he kept naming runs “Kagerzoom parkrun met Annaliese, Kagerzoom parkrun met Mariette”
I thought how nice that he kept randomly meeting these people he knew at the parkrun, but it turns out met is Dutch for “with”
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Unfortunately my local parkrun had the dreaded runner collapse, CPR and defib requirement this morning. Thankfully the lady is said to be breathing on her own again, obviously in ICU but I think a little bit of a shock for all involved. Thankfully nurses and doctors around to do all the right things at the right time.
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After the incident at my local parkrun a couple of months ago, a nurse from our running club has been going to local events to offer basic training in CPR.
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We have a de-fib at our Parkrun fixed to the starting HQ hut.
Assuming Mrs FP doesn’t do a u-turn again on the Open Day, then we should be at parkrun tomorrow. It will be my 100th
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Sub20 for the first time this morning in well over 2 years. Slowed massively after 3k, but that’s improvement from the 2k mark the last couple of times!
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Building up running again. 3.5 hours on the bike yesterday so legs a bit heavy.
Jog there, jog round and jog back for a total of 13km. Nice to chat to some people, didn’t look at my watch and just tried to find my rhythm.
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