Another day, another double, this one in the far, far north*. It started, as all good doubles do, with a parkrun and ended with the third and final Trailblazer organised by Janathoner Local Adventures.
Graves parkrun is the youngest of the three Sheffield parkruns, clocking up run number 9 today. Not having run the other two, it could also be the prettiest and the hilliest. I’m willing to bet that it has the most species of animal en route. The second half of the route takes you through the Animal Park, where there are ducks and chickens and turkeys and big pigs** and little pigs** and sheep** and hairy cattle**.
The start is by the car park, the end is by the cafe, and the latter serves the largest cake slices, cup cakes and flapjacks that I’ve ever seen. The volunteers are co-ordinated by Martha*** who saved the best role for herself****.
It may never be a course that you run a pb on, but if you want hill training, family entertainment and post-run cake, then this parkrun could have your name on it. And the results came through before I’d even arrived at Clumber Park for my 10km.
After my tortuous club run on Thursday, I wasn’t really looking forward to this run, but Rat Race had saved the best to last. They’d managed to book perfect running weather, and had even arranged for a sprinkling of rain at the halfway point to cool us down. The route proved to be the most benign of the three. Yes, there were hills, including the obligatory one in the last kilometre and a half, but they were little and often and separated by running goddess down hill stretches.
At 8.5km, I finally caught up to the woman I’d been using as a pacemaker, and we did a quick calculation to see whether a sub 60min finish was on the cards. Not quite, but sub 61mins certainly was, a result that I’m chuffed to bits with.
I also promised an honorable mention to the Fieldhead Hotel off Junction 22 of the M1, who printed off my Trailblazer joining instructions and parking permit at late o’clock when I realised that I’d completely failed to pack them*****.
All in all, a good day’s Juneathoning. I’m now off to catch up with everyone’s blogs to find out what else is new in Juneathon world.
*Well, north of the Watford Gap, at any rate.
**I’m from the town. Please don’t expect me to be able to identify specific breeds!
***Or possibly her dad.
****Sounding the triangle to let runners know that they’d reached the halfway point.
*****Or more accurately, failed to print them off in the first place.
abradypus 
Nice one! I did the inaugural Graves and loved it and yes, it is hillier than the other two but only slightly! And I liked Clumber more than Bedgebury last year too. So glad you had a great day and of course, the hospitality of Leicestershire folk is legendary! 🙂
Ooh sub 61 minutes 10 trail run, that is pretty good!
Well done another amazing Saturday of running! The rest of us have started training for TR24 madly in response!!
That is some good running. I shall have to keep my eye open for clumber park runs. Not too far from here.
Well done on the 10k, it’s pretty damn good for a trail run! I want a flapjack now.
And I agree, anything north of the Watford Gap is, well, NORTH.
Blimey you’ve been up our way and we missed you. You are doing a lot of running – good running – this year. Great stuff!
How cool is that a triangle to let you know when you reach the halfway point of a parkrun?!
Well done on another 5k/10k double!
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