Curly Wurly on tour. Again,
The thing with having a parkrun route on a flood plain is that when it rains, it floods, funny that……
So after a week of is it on, is it off – a few of the Curly Wurly (Somerdale Pavilion) Core team and their friends decided to go touristing, again. Luckily in Bristol we are literally spoilt for choice of parkruns within an hours drive so having narrowed it down to three choices we asked the sensible folk of a certain dubious Facebook group to decide for us and the resounding consensus was Tetbury Goods Shed, decisions were most definitely not made based on recommendations and suggestions of which breakfast items to have.
Having realised our original plan of car sharing in a Fiat 500 wasn’t going to work as our original 3 people had grown to 8 so we split up. I took one car and dutifully looked up the travel directions on the webpage, clearly noted the part about “don’t follow the exact postcode as it takes you down a dead end” looked at the alternative postcode but google maps seemed to show it really far away. Thought of going for the third option of just using “Tetbury Goods Shed” as the final destination – looked good on the map, what could go wrong?
Anyway 40 minutes later, having followed the sat nav and gone down the dead end……. We arrived, ridiculously early. A quick mooch around to look at the surroundings and the obligatory photo op, we said Hi to some of the extremely friendly team of volunteers, took some more photos and assessed the “facilities” – wow! These were pretty awesome.
Again being the sensible one of course, I had previously checked on the Facebook page to see which route they were on, and to see that trail shoes would be helpful, half of us decided to heed this advice; some didn’t, some slipped and fell over in the mud……
The first timers briefing was concise and friendly, the main brief was prompt and very well-articulated. Mention of milestones and several volunteer milestones were celebrated too. The whole organisation on the day was flawless, plenty of smiley happy marshals, and the hi fives were awesome. The out and back course was a delight – perfectly wide enough and plenty of room. Not realising it was on an incline, and generally getting back into fitness I had a plod at the back of the pack, on the way back realised it was descending nicely and feeling in general really good. Back to the finish and rudely beaten to a sprint finish by my running buddy, I had realised, not only had I ran the entire 5k, but that I had taken 2 minutes off last weeks’ time and got under sub 40.
Already feeling particularly smug, we stayed at the finish to see the rest come in, had a nice chat with several people who noticed (and were also wearing) Doynton Hard Half marathon finishers t-shirts, had to admit that only one of us had actually run it, the rest of us were marshalling it.
And then we went into the café….. I could go on about this forever, but as I already have waffled on for ages I’ll keep it brief. The food was amazing, I think between the two tables of us we sampled most of it and it was really, really good.
In summary – awesome parkrun, great course, great facilities, fantastic volunteers and divine food. Seeing as we did the alternative course we will just have to come back again and do the usual one when its back on, and have breakfast again.
Thank you for having us, we will be back soon.
Lynsey and the Curly Wurly gang
This week 142 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 42 were first timers and 42 recorded new Personal Bests. Representatives of 26 different clubs took part.
The event was made possible by 29 volunteers:
Alan MCADAM • Rachel MCADAM • Eileen HODGSON • Ruth WATKINSON • Peter HODGSON • Vanessa CAMBRIDGE • Jane PRITCHARD • James COX • Lynsey MILES • Nea SNEDDON-JENKINS • Laura FINCH • Nick MOORE • Sally PATTERSON • Lisa PEILL • Lou DAWSON • Bex KANDIYALI • Catherine CHIDLEY • Holly BELL • David THOMPSON • William PEILL • Kimberley MONAHAN • Ada-Grace WITCHELL • Pippa-Rose WITCHELL • Roger PEILL • Nuala MONAHAN • Paul BARRON • Maggie MARRIOTT • Paul HOLBROOK • Bernadette BELL
Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Tetbury Goods Shed parkrun Results Page.
The male record is held by Alex BAMPTON who recorded a time of 16:24 on 24th August 2019 (event number 15).
The female record is held by Erica MARTIN who recorded a time of 19:20 on 24th August 2019 (event number 15).
The Age Grade course record is held by Mary DERRICK who recorded 89.20% (21:45) on 21st September 2019 (event number 19).
Tetbury Goods Shed parkrun started on 18th May 2019. Since then 2,061 participants have completed 4,166 parkruns covering a total distance of 20,830 km, including 787 new Personal Bests. A total of 214 individuals have volunteered 1,011 times.