There are three things that I love about parkrun: the courses, the people and the stats. Ally Pally parkrun started on Saturday, and its inaugural run ticked all three boxes.
The course…
…is at the challenging end of the parkrun scale. Underfoot is a mixture of tarmac, grass and mud and the course is far from flat.
You start in the centre of a bell-shaped loop, and begin by running out to the edge and round. This bit is fairly benign: a bit of up, a gentle down, lots of opportunity to chat, if you’re that way inclined.
Then comes the hill, which runs from point 1 (sharp left turn which we nearly missed for chatting) up through some trees, across a road to point 2 (hello lovely marshals) and then diagonally up a steep grassy slope to point 3 (aaargh!) after which it’s a gentle rise to point 4.
As you turn the corner at point 4, the road descends quite sharply leading to a welcome stretch of flat and the beginning of loop two.
The people…
…were strangely familiar, not because they were typical parkrunners, but because I knew so many of them. Tim and Rick (Grovelands and Oakhill), Danny and Rebecca (Gunnersbury), Roy (Nonsuch), Dave (Wormwood Scrubs), everywhere I turned there seemed to be a familiar face. Not to mention Paul and Joanne Sinton-Hewitt, who I recognised from Iceland but had never actually spoken to.
And there were also new people to meet. Vanessa, a regular volunteer and runner at Wormwood Scrubs, was indulging in a little parkrun tourism. Prashan was making his debut at parkrun, accompanied by Grovelands regular, Reggie. Stephen (the chap I was chatting to when we nearly missed the turn up the hill) is based at Oak Hill, but is now halfway to a place on the table of doom. Helen, who kindly ran back to Finsbury park with me afterwards, showed me a couple of great running routes that were far, far more enjoyable than the road route I had planned.
The stats…
19 of the 49 runners were 50- or 100-club members, and between the 49 of us we have run 2,345 parkruns.
17 of the 49 runners are on the table of doom, including the unmissably fluorescent Burnham Joggers, Dave and Bob.
And 18 of the 48 runners have run at least one other parkrun on the same day as me. This, I will grant you, is really only of interest to me, but as it’s my blog, I’m going to include this graph anyway.
PS…
Thank you to everyone who offered advice and sympathy on my knee. So far, I’ve gone with rest and chocolate 😉 but the physio and foam rolling will no doubt follow.
Oooh, lovely stats!! Having run in Ally Pally many a time, I know just how tough it is. Well done!
Oooh I do love a graph and these are particularly good.
Decided against the “carry on running until you’re sure it’s broken” school of injury, then? Very good!
Ooooh those are some cool stats particularly the paths crossed one – its such a small world…
I agree I think Ally Pally is technically the toughest parkrun that I have done. If you want a challenging run this is one for you, but please be careful.
Great bunch of stats!
That hill sounds mean!
And love the pie charts – very colourful 🙂
Wicked graphs…
On the knee – sounds very familiar. I ignored mine for 2-3 weeks and kept exercising and then had to endure 4 weeks of doing absolutely nothing and am still having to be very careful about what I do and building up slowly. Get to the physio! I thought mine felt like ITB, but it turned out to be a sprained LCL. Deffo worth having it checked out properly, although in the interim chocolate is obviously the answer!
Bring on the powerpoint presentation!
Hah! If it wasn’t for you I’d have missed that the turn altogether, and would probably still be lost in Ally Pally park. If I realised that you were such a geek, I’d have tried harder to keep up for you a bit longer!
Thanks for keying me in to the “Table of Doom”, getting another 5 parkruns under my belt is definitely going to be my 2012 challenge.
Unfortunately on the second day of my warm weather training (/honeymoon) I bust my ankle while running down the Las Vegas strip, so I might be volunteering when I get back:

(it wasn’t the Vibs that did it).
Ouch. That looks painful. I’ll look out for you on the table of doom.