Last weekend featured a trip to Aldenham parkrun, which is located somewhere between Borehamwood and Watford in a country park round a reservoir. It is a bit of a hike from London but by now any parkrun that meets everyone’s suitability requirements (me: not grass, most other people: not a repeat, everyone: can actually get there) is going to be a hike. In this case it involved getting three trains and a long walk clambering over a wet field in Hertfordshire. It is a good thing I am an early riser.
The reason we were headed to Aldenham was to celebrate Camilla reaching her 100th different parkrun venue and Camilla has already done every parkrun in London and most of the parkruns easily reachable from London. This is particularly noteworthy because nearly a year ago Camilla was diagnosed with a particularly nasty kind of incurable brain tumour, the sort of thing which can put a major dampener on reaching one’s goals. Seeing my friend go through this has been quite life changing for me too, and at first all I could think of was the things that she wouldn’t be able to do, or (selfishly) the things we wouldn’t be able to do together. But – if you can ever call someone with a life limiting diagnosis lucky – she has been lucky in that she has remained well enough to tick off some important parkrun related goals like completing her Alphabet, Lon-done and 100 different venues and has several more in the pipeline. And from my point of view, I am incredibly grateful that she is choosing to spend her precious time doing parkruns with me and making memories that I hope will be a comfort to me in the future. For now I try not to think about how much I am going to miss her and be glad that we’ve had this time and that she knows how much our friendship means to me.
But enough sentimentality and back to the parkrun! Aldehham is two laps, almost completely flat and mostly on trail (with a stretch on a pebbly car park and another on very cracked and hazardous tarmac alongside the reservoir). A lot of it is through woods and it kind of always feels like you might be lost but if you look at the map you realise that there is only one path and nowhere to go wrong. As the first-timers-briefer said, “if you feel very wet and are surrounded by ducks” then you have probably gone wrong. The course can be very narrow in parts, there was a bit near the beginning where I was reduced to a walk at a bottleneck and another where I was fighting to get past a bunch of people who were just a smidgen slower than me (but not slow enough for me to go round). The route has a lot of sticking up tree roots and stones and having tripped and nearly fallen twice just on the walk there I was taking no chances and ran with my eyes fixed to the floor doing some kind of comedy exaggerated lifting of feet like I was running on hot coals. Adding this factor to the fact that I am still recovering from TWO injuries and not running very much at all I thought my finish time of 36:29 was very respectable. My favourite part of the run was just before the finish where you run through a magical tree tunnel with sheep sticking their noses through the branches to spectate the silly humans.
My reward for getting faster and completing parkrun before the walkers had finished their first lap (the first is slightly longer than the second so there was a bit of wiggle room) was that I got to do another lap at walking pace where I actually dared to admire the scenery. parkrun are really encouraging walkers to participate these days, which I think is a really good thing. A few years ago, if I’d been injured and not able to run I’d have either volunteered or not bothered at all because I would have been too embarrassed to just walk. Now there’s no stigma at all, and almost every week I see someone I know walking, due to ailments ranging from brain tumours to bad backs or even just because they did a long run the day before and are being sensible. This is also great for me because I am usually the slowest runner amongst my friends and used to feel everyone was always waiting for me, sometimes in adverse weather for hours on end, but now I know that however slowly I run I’m going to be faster than the walkers. Well, hopefully. Take nothing for granted!
7:07 