Number 181, number 43 in my quest to reach 50 different events (half Cowell), and most importantly, the final letter in my spelling of DANCER!
Access:
From my house in Lisburn, this is less than an hour away. Down the N1/M1, off at Junction 16, turn left at the traffic lights before the Crowne Plaza, and the Dundalk Institute of Technology is on your right. It is helpfully marked by brown signs all the way in from the motorway.
Facilities:
On a Saturday, there’s loads of car parking available! The course starts near the big wind turbine, so head for that and find a spot.
There are toilets (and indeed changing rooms with showers!) on site.
Tea is only provided once a month, but there’s a handy service station across the road which has a cafe and shop (and where I bought Minnie a Jumbone afterwards). Start and finish are close, though not exactly the same spot, and there’s a tree that runners adorn with their bags and belongings. On the finish stretch, you have to tantalisingly pass the actual finish funnel before rounding the turn point.
Course:
It’s not the most scenic of courses, being 3 laps of the playing fields with a bit added on to start and finish. But it’s pretty flat – there’s a very small incline on one side of the fields, but you’d barely notice it.
The surface is mostly tarmac-ish, and it’s quite narrow. Being a 3 lap course, it’s likely you’ll be lapped by the front runners during lap 2, but will have a nice bit of space on lap 3. There was good marshalling at every corner, and I made a point of counting the final marshall to keep track of my laps.
Crowd:
Average numbers are about 100, with a good range of times. I got chatting to an Irish dancer called Ann before the run, and there was a friendly welcome from all.
Gear:
I’m having Garmin troubles, so I used MapMyRun as a backup (only to discover later that it hadn’t worked). My headphones are kaput so I was running without music. Which did allow for a few more conversations – Minnie aways attracts “cheating” comments, and I point out that it’s a free weekly timed run, not a race! My comedy 150 red shirt was a conversation starter, and as I overtook a couple of youngsters they wondered what happend if the doggie pooped. I was able to reply that I would stop and pick it up – I always carry at least 2 bags!
Time:
My running form isn’t the best at the minute, and I was aiming for 29ish, which I acheived. Considering I had to stop and tie a shoelace even before reaching the turning point for the first time (ie about 50m), that’ll do.
And the rest:
This was a super special run for me, as it was the final run in my parkrunDANCER project.
All my parkruns:
NI (and other) parkruns: summary list
Filed under: Parkrun, parkrunDANCER, running | Tagged: Dundalk, parkrunDANCER |
Dancing At Lunacy 
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