One of the things I like about parkrun tourism is the way it prompts you to explore holiday destinations that you never would have considered otherwise simply because the parkrun there fits the criteria for someone’s particular challenge. Left to my own devices I would simply go to Greece every year (which doesn’t even have a parkrun – yet) with perhaps the odd foray to Germany to see a band if I were feeling really adventurous. I would certainly never set foot in Poland and would still be thinking (incorrectly) that it wasn’t a nice place to visit. I also had no particular interest in visiting The Hague and if you’d asked me to tell you something about it I might have been able to muster “it’s in Holland and there’s courts and business stuff there, I think” and not a lot more. But The Hague has a parkrun that begins with Z – Zuiderpark (pronounced Zowderpark, I learnt) – and Camilla is after a second alphabet so off on the Eurostar we trotted and 3.5 hours later we were in The Hague!
I was particularly pleased to note that Zuiderpark is an extremely suitable parkrun venue and it would be difficult to find a faster course anywhere in the world. The park, like most of the Netherlands, is absolutely pancake flat, with the exception of one very very slight bridge, which I nearly tripped over on both laps. The course is a perfect circle in tarmac round the park, there is zero potential for a wrong turn and no turns to slow you down. There are about 150 runners so you are unlikely to be hemmed in by another participant or get caught in a bottleneck. The only distractions on course are some deer and herons and a smattering of Art, but if you trip over any of them you are about 100 metres off course and only have yourself to blame. In short, the only thing that can go wrong here is your own stupidity, and as I sailed towards the finish line well on target for a PB, I delivered a Leyton Orient level of last minute fuckup: I mistook the start of the cones leading to the finish line for the finish itself and stopped dead and then walked forward at a leisurely pace, only noticing my mistake when I spotted the timekeeper clocking me in. I’d recorded a time of 33:07 on my watch and my existing PB (set in a hurricane in Hartlepool when I was much, much fitter) was 33:14. Now the big question was: had my amble to the finish taken more or less than seven seconds? I tried timing myself walking the offending stretch, but the result (5.5 seconds) was inconclusive. Despite knowing it was really really bad form I asked the timekeeper if I could peer at his results but I had mulled it over for too long and I had scrolled off the page. There was nothing I could do but have a very impatient wait for my official result and say things like “of course times don’t matter anyway it is all about the lovely experience” and “you can always go to Dulwich next week and have another go” to myself and try not to punch myself in the head for being a complete idiot.
After my 596,992th refresh of the results page, my result arrived. I was convinced it would say 33:15, but it didn’t. 33:11! For once I’d got away with it and got my first PB at any distance since that windy day in Hartlepool in March 22! I have some odd feeling about the fact that I’m currently running about 15k a week, with no long runs and no speed work and am still really quite unfit, but also a lot lighter than I was before my injury and I know that is the only reason why I got a PB. I have to tell myself that losing weight isn’t cheating and that when I get back to full training and am still less-fat then I might, finally, be capable of my two biggest goals – a sub 30 5k and beating my HM PB, which will be 8 years old by the day of my next attempt.
But of course times don’t matter.
It is all about the lovely experience and time spent with friends.
But they help! And they also help to make the lovely experience more lovely because I was in a good mood after that and bought EVERYONE a drink and happily went around an art museum (it was actually quite good – the Escher museum, he of the funny steps and optical illusions). I found a vegan pizza bar that sells bruschetta (my new food of choice now I have gone off Quorn dinosaurs) and cocktails. The next day we went to Madurodam, which is a delightful model village showcasing the best of the Netherlands (with a very sad story precipitating its existence), the Atlantic Wall museum (your traditional “war artefacts in a bunker” museum) and of course Brewdog in Rotterdam. I discovered vegan bitterballen (but not how they make them so round) and bought two pairs of amusing socks. The final activity before leaving was a quick swim at Scheveningen, which is an absolutely stunning beach with a calm, clear, not very warm sea and no jellyfish whatsoever.
7:07 