Dancing At Lunacy

While I am working my way through the Norn Irn parkruns (8/19 at time of writing), I do try to visit others in the vicinity of where I travel.  I happened to be in London one weekend, and had a go at Crane Park, Feltham.

Access:

My best friend lives in Feltham, and is my usual lodgings any time I visit the big smoke.  So I was truly delighted to find that this run was quite literally round the corner from her – a leisurely 10 minute jog took me to the starting point beside the children’s play area.

Course:

Crane Park is a long thin patch of green around a stream.  The course is 1 1/2 laps of this rectangle, with the 2 short sides run on public footpaths.  It is very pretty, taking in an old shot tower.  And there’s plenty of wildlife around including the obligatory ducks, and a couple of squirrels.  The paths are a bit lumpy and narrow, but there are no hills to worry about.

Crowd:

The turnout when I visited was 117, which seems about average.  They’re a speedy bunch, and they seemed to zoom through a pre-run brief, and didn’t hang around much afterwards.  What threw me a bit was the 9 am start – it’s 9.30 in Norn Irn and Scotland!

Strangley Appropriate Song:

I was in town to attend my daughter’s debut at Saddlers Wells, so “Keep On Movin'” by Five made me grin.

Gear:

I’m familiar now with my cordless earphones and Garmin watch, and they all performed well.  Had a bit of a panic when I got home and couldn’t find them, but they were safely tucked inside my toilet bag.  Phew!  I also got an email telling me that my red 50 Tshirt is still stuck in production limbo. Shame, I’d love to show it off on my parkrun tourism jaunts.

Time:

I was disappointed with my 29:57.  I know I run much faster with canine-assist, and realistically, this is my first sub-30 without Mini helping me along.  But it was more than 3 minutes slower than last week, I was 97th, and 5th in my age category!  Oh well, parkrun is clearly doing wonders for the fitness levels of 50 year-old women in West London…

List of all the parkruns I’ve completed.

Filed under: London, Parkrun, running | Tagged: Crane Park, parkrun |