My first Park Run...

www.parkrun.com.au

My town had it's first ever Park Run on Saturday 23rd August 2014 at Rosepoint Park,
and as much as I would love to have stayed in bed,  having had such a big week in Dorrigo, Coffs Harbour, and Gunnedah for AgQuip (a farmers version of the Ekka or the Royal Easter Show, but without the rides and the showbags are really really boring) at which I had walked over 12km only 2 days prior to the Park Run,   I was just too excited to lay there, was ready to go by 7am and turned up at 7.30am for an 8am start.


I had been thinking read procrastinating  about taking up Park Runs for some time, it was even one of my goals for the year, to do a Park Run in the months I wasn't participating in a paid event,  but could never get out of my own way long enough to actually do it, so when Singleton Council announced that they were organising one in our own town I was over the moon.

I'd been waiting for weeks for it to start, kept checking the website and the calendar for the dates to make sure that I had the right date and hadn't actually missed it.  I'd even set an alarm in my phone to remind me, and kept checking that to make sure I'd entered all the details correctly.

I registered about 3 weeks before the event and ordered my $6 key tag so that I would never have to worry about forgetting my barcode and risk not getting an official result.

Did I mention that I was keen to do a Park Run?

There were a few people beginning to gather even at the early time of 7.30am but by the time we kicked off there were 220 people there!  I don't know what the numbers are normally like at these things... is that good or fairly average??

As it was the official launch there were some speeches made, none of which were as long winded as you might expect from local pollies, sponsors, and Park Run officials, and we kicked off only about 10 minutes late.

I had persuaded a good friend to do it with me, not that she took much persuading...  The conversation went something like this - Me: "So will I see you at Park Run tomorrow?"  Her: "hmm you know what... I think yes, see you there!"  She brought her hubby and teenage son who ran their own race, while she and I stayed together.

Her hubby clocked up a 'first' for Park Run apparently by completing the circuit in jeans, dress shirt and a jumper!  He was definitely the best dressed bloke there, and is definitely no MAMIL.

We counted down to the start and I realised rather quickly that we should have self-seeded when all the runners and pram pushers were tearing out around us.  Never mind, no one tripped over us, so I'll just file that away for next week.

Singleton Parkrun course

Rosepoint Park is rather large and it's where most of Singleton's playing fields are, but being finals week for many of the sports clubs that use them, most of the teams were playing away that week and we had the place to ourselves which was great.

The course begins on the river side of the park between the netball courts and cricket nets and heads west to the concrete path.  We then followed the path all the way to the end which is at the opposite end of the park, then went down a small slope to the river walk and kept on going until we almost met up with the starting point again, this was the halfway point at which we just turned around and went back the same way until we ended up back at the starting point.


It was a really lovely route with a beautiful view, about half of it was on the concrete path and the rest was on grass.  Soggy, water logged, mooshy, uneven grass...

I don't like walking on grass as I have a tendency to face plant when walking on soft or uneven ground, or stepping off gutters, or walking on sealed footpaths... which you can read about here.

By the time we had gotten roughly a quarter of the way around we began meeting the first of the runners on their way back.

This is one of the bits I love about this sort of event because this is when you get all the encouragement you need to keep going.  You get big smiles, high fives, congratulations, encouragement, in short everything you need to boost flagging spirits.

Not all runners do it, and I'm not sure if it's even a particular type  of runner that does it, but some run past you looking like they truly hate what they're doing and wish the earth would open up and swallow them whole right then and there, but others - the ones that give the smiles and high fives - look like they're having a ball and are more than happy to see you there and encourage you to keep going.

We crossed the finish line 1:06:56 later, having talked the entire way around, and solved the problems of the world, as well as discovering that we are so similar in our habits and outlook that we must have been twins who were separated at birth.

Given that the course had so much grass in it, which I'm really not used to walking on  in fact I avoid it like the plague  and said grass was seriously soggy from days of rain, and that instead of putting all my effort into a sub-hour time I put it into chatting the whole time... I don't think I did too bad.

I came away with another new addiction and really soggy shoes and socks.

I'll be back...

 A little bit about AgQuip Field Days...

Every year for 3 days in August for the last 41 years over 3,000 companies all over the country and the world descend on Gunnedah in country NSW for what's called AgQuip.

It's basically a showcase of every agricultural need a man or woman  on the land could possibly need, from what seed to plant, and the machines to plant it, to a new way of fencing, or a chopper to round up the cattle.  There's tractors, tyres, harvesters, cattle, fencing systems, in short, this place has everything, and it's massive, the purpose built site covers 26 hectares, or if you prefer the old money its the equivalent of just over 64 acres.

It makes the Ekka or the Royal Easter Show look like the school fete in comparison, even though they are infinitely more entertaining,  because let me tell you something...  If you're not a farmer, or have an industry that relies on farming in some way, I wouldn't advise a visit to AqQuip.

Unless, that is, you like to walk pointlessly around a showground that has absolutely nothing in it that interests you, just for the sake of clocking up the km's which is exactly what I did on the Thursday.

I do like to indulge in a bit of people watching, and there were all sorts there that day I can tell you, but apart from the sea of cowboy hats, I think the oddest person there was probably me.  I think I was the only 'townie' there that hadn't made a token effort to blend in, and the purposeful walk that I employed to get me from one end to the other, over and over again, certainly got me my fair share of strange looks.

I didn't get up and down every row, but some of the ones I did do, I covered twice.  I remember thinking that some of the exhibits looked familiar but didn't figure it out until I looked at a close up of Map My Walk.

There is after all, only so many big red and green machines you can see before they all begin to look the same...

So I walked more or less aimlessly for 12.45km  a personal best  and was completely exhausted by the end of the day.  We had to drive for an hour to get to our motel, where to my horror I learned that our room was up a couple of flights of stairs.  I was, needless to say, dead to the world by 7.30pm.

Can't get fresher than this...

If you need a bus to get around it, then it's too big...

It's a poo spreader...