25 May 2024
Ah summer. We dream about it at 6am in the morning, when
we get up in the 2nd week of January at the start of Spring Marathon
training, when it’s freezing cold and raining.
Your first block of running, getting out of the Christmas food and drink
habit, the urge to say ‘sod it, Monday I’ll start’ cos it is Monday and your
excuses have dried up, besides, you’ve got Helsby (4 Villages) Half coming up
and you have do to a long run to remind yourself you still can run.
Well today was one of those beautiful
late Spring, early Summer warm mornings.
The birds were singing, Rishi Sunak is still drying out, and the course
at Pheonix looked beautiful.
I’m a crap volunteer, I really
am. Today was my 499th run
and until about 6 weeks ago, my volunteering stints were, well, as rare as a
week without a Tory defection, until I realised when I was touring around and
about to run at Clarence, that you can get a volunteering credit for sitting
down on your bum, having a brew, and blabbering on for a bit on your laptop
talking about the run you’ve just done !
Perfect for me. I love
blabbering, sitting down, parkrun and coffee so a complete Brucie Bonus. In the past few weeks I’ve written reports on
Clarence, Pennington Flash, Alexandra, Peel, and Bramhall. All unique, all fab in their own way (you
have to try Clarence when it’s wet, flipping brilliant)
I’ve been meaning to come to
Pheonix for a while, but having been struck down by the lurgy a couple of weeks
ago, I had to delay it. Woodbank is my
home run and Pheonix is my NENDY (Nearest Event Not Yet Done) so was very
excited today to make the shortish trip
down the M56 to the fantastic event.
My sense of direction is
notoriously rubbish, so I arrived at the Norton Priory Museum (WA7 1BD) around
8.20 in case I got lost. However, when
I got there, the brilliant parkrun fairies had already put signs up in the
carpark pointing you towards parkrun !
Now for a tourist this is a Godsend. I‘ve
been to a few parkruns recently where it’s not very clear when the start is and
this is certainly one where you could get lost.
(if you do arrive before the signs either wait for them to arrive or
just turn left out of the carpark (not the way you drive in) and its about a 5
minute walk down the path and over a bridge)
The café wasn’t open today and I
couldn’t see where the toilets were but as ever the marshals were so helpful
and very friendly. There were tourists
from all over the place (including Brisbane) and I even saw a fellow Swansea City
fan (YJB) . Plan was to have a chat
after but he was way too quick for me and dropped me within the 1st mile. (Hywel Williams maybe ?) Also had a chat with a lovely couple from
Birmingham who epitomised everything about parkrun. The tourism, the going on holiday and seeing
if there is a local parkrun nearby, the pure joy about being out and about the
open air, walking and running and volunteering.
Such a brilliant, fantastic thing to do.
Told you I like to babble.
What about the course ? It’s a bit of a naughty one, a kind of a
Venus Fly Trap about it. On the face of
it, looks docile. All on path running
alongside the waterline, 2 ¾ laps. Jobs
a good ‘un. However, that’s without ‘Graham’s
Hill’. You have to run 3 times up that
bugger. It’s a perfect hill. Not steep, quite long, just so you can push
yourself ready for the lovely fast descent on the other side where you start
your second and final lap.
95 of us set off this morning,
course is a tiny bit congested when you start off for about 200 yard or so but
it soon spaces out. It really it a
cracking course. The finish it not in
the same place as the start but the very kind marshals take your stuff to the
end for you (just up the hill a bit)
I say the same about every
parkrun I go to. I loved it. I’m going back to the Spiritual Home of
parkrun next week, the park where Bushy wished it was, Woodbank for my 500th. Always do my landmark runs there. My home run.
Local forward to it being surrounded by some of the nicest people in
parkrun world.
See you all again soon hopefully
Pheonix. Nothing you can improve on.
Stay groovy
John Richards
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