It’s definitely been a case of in the best laid plans of mice and men and parkrun, that my tourism hasn’t gone particularly well recently. Last weekend I was due to go to Ormskirk for a Fibonacci number, but my car needed emergency repairs instead. Oh well it will happen sometime! On Friday night, I looked at my map on the 5K app and thought I really need to get rid of that annoying gap which is Preston. I have twice previously tried to get to Preston: the first time a trip was cancelled due to a friend’s illness. The last attempt it was iced up.
This morning then I finally set off to take part at Preston. Previously, I had been advised on a great place to park which was free from fellow tourists. From there it was a relatively short walk to the start and finish area and on the way I met a couple of locals who gave me some advice about the parkrun which was lovely. One of the great things about Preston parkrun is that the toilets were freshly cleaned just before I arrived and they were free. Then it was time to chat to other parkrunners including in the lovely, run director and fellow tourists up from Crosby parkrun.
We had a 1st timers’ briefing, which explained about the three laps of the park and gave us the safety warning about the flag post on the top. It was then time to try and work out where the back of the pack was for the start as they were over 400 people taking part. A quick countdown and we were off. It was a slow start due to the large number of runners, which meant that on the first hill, I had a very good excuse for walking as I couldn’t really run.
Once we reach the top of the hill and people can start going down, the field spread out quite rapidly, which left plenty of room for me to do my run walk strategy. There were plenty friendly and encouraging marshals as we went round and I was with a few runners for the whole of the route as we were a very similar pace which was nice. We were lapped by the faster runners before we had crossed the start line after a first lap, but they were pretty speedy.
I enjoyed my three laps and a little sprint finish. After I’d finished, I checked out the café, which is currently only serving hot drinks and cakes (which were very tasty!). And chatted to the lovely tourists from Crosby parkrun who have invited me to come down and check out their beachfront event, which includes the Antony Gormley statues one of my future venues as I work my way down through Lancashire.
