Run > parkrun

Cirencester parkrun 1/238

A gentle warm up before the weekend's Cotswold 24 at Cirencester Park seemed appropriate. That the parkrun was only 20 minutes' walk away made it a no-brainer†.

Wendy, Ian, Simon and I wandered over there to find a really well-organised parkrun - there was even a marshals' briefing, which Andover parkrun Race Directors Ian and Simon thought a little over the top. In defence of the Cirencester team, this was only their 26th parkrun, so it's early days yet.

The first timers' briefing was a total scrum: amongst 264 finishes there were 144 "First Timer!"s at Cirencester, of whom only 9 were new to parkrun. Mind you, 264 missed Cirencester's record by 30 finishes.

The course is pleasant enough: absolutely pancake-flat run over 3 laps in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural University. Wendy and I were lapped before we'd completed our first one, which was gratifying: I wasn't going to be wearing myself out for later. Thrice round, encouraging a lady runner towards the end and chatting a bit about a training strategy for her, and then pausing 5 yards from the end, to the mystification of the finish funnel marshals, to quiz a chap about his Auckland Marathon T shirt. "Don't you want to finish?" (the marshals) "oh yes," trot, trot, trot.....

"255," I said, "that's all ones in binary!" "Oh yes," said the marshal.

It was getting ominously warm.

† it might be considered a no-brainer of a different sort

Split Summary
===
1) 0.62m - 7:30(12:04/m) 80cal
2) 0.62m - 7:36(12:14/m) 94cal
3) 0.62m - 8:29(13:39/m) 60cal
4) 0.62m - 9:02(14:32/m) 76cal
5) 0.62m - 9:02(14:32/m) 68cal
6) 0.19m - 2:40(14:18/m) 25cal