A full on Month of Parkruns was had this month, with the mornings getting warmer week on week it's beautiful to get out first thing on Saturday and enjoy the outdoors.

In January I did 3 Parkruns and started with a bang, as my first Parkrun of the year was on New Years Day. I was over in Brixworth with my girlfriend for New Years Eve, so the obvious choice of Parkrun would be 'Brixworth Country Park', a favourite of mine and one you can always count on being a great atmosphere with many families turning out for it. As usual, I forgot about the end of the course, so the first of 2 hills near the finish was a killer, however the 2nd wasn't too bad. Now I will say, I was so impressed with the turnout due to it being 1. New Years Morning, but 2. Absolutely pouring down throughout. I have to add, it started raining at around 9:15 so we were all round the course by then, but it really chucked it down, which I guess was nice for anyone over heating potentially! So with all of this said, it was crazy that it was Brixworth record attendance to date, at 220 runners, for a small village parkrun that is MEGA! However it has to be a parkrun tourism dream spot I am sure. Despite the weather and New Years, I came 8th with a time of 20:39 which I was very happy with. Brixworth is very rarely a PB course due to it's terrain so couldn't complain with that time at all. 01/01/2025.

So I have been a bit lackluster lately on my Parkrun blogs, so instead of doing individual ones, I think i'll go for monthly overviews and attempt to see how successful they i'll be at keeping up! I don't do lots of parkrun tourism so it may be a bit similar however I still tour a bit and it'll be nice to keep track of my parkruns this way. However, the Stats and Rankings are accurate haha!

02/12/2023: I think this is the coldest, if not certainly one of the coldest Parkrun;s I have done. Lee and I had our Theatre Company's Christmas do the night before, so weren't exactly feeling sprightly aha! But we wanted to try a new Parkrun in our local area, the University of Northampton Parkrun. 

05/08/2023: Salcey Forest Parkrun was the next local one to be ticked off the list, and in any weather you can guarantee that it'll a muddy one... but that always means more fun right! The car parking ample, however not free but it's right next to the briefing area, so there's no chance of getting lost. I was welcomed with open arms pretty much straight away from the marshalls and RD's, lovely lovely community there!

08/07/2023: This, unbeknown to me at the time, would be the first of many at one of my local and now my regular Parkrun. I am quite blessed to have 7 parkruns within a 25 minute drive from me. With the main Northampton one being included in that. Held at 'The Racecourse', it is an incredibly flat and nice course to run. Not much to look at in terms of the scenery, being surrounded by town houses as it is in the centre of Northampton. However, this draws a lot of people to the Parkrun and the marshalls, volunteers and fellow runners are truly some of the best. The reason I keep going back is due to how supportive it is and now having got to know many runners, and also growing with them in terms of PBs, it's lovely to truly feel a part of that community.

01/07/2023: Lee and I decided to go to another one of our local Parkruns the week following Irchester, this time it was Sixfields Upton Country Parkrun, which is in the not to big shadow of the Hallowed turf that is Sixfields Stadium, the home of the mighty Northampton Town FC. With a parkrun being so close to our football club it was a really lovely feeling and the course also happened to be deceivingly very flat. With it being a country park, you would think that there would be hills, bumps and rocky terrain. Whilst it isn’t full on paths, the terrain is nice and as I say, very flat. This course takes you from a normal looking park, then past sheep fields, through the farmer gate, past his barns and back to the park, so you get everything within 2.5K, as the route is a 2 lapper.

10/06/2023: The first Parkrun outside of Bognor Regis was in the beautiful setting of Brixworth Country Park, Northamptonshire. Being from a Northamptonshire village, it was lovely making the short journey over to one of my local Parkrun’s and to say it is Picturesque is an understatement. The views across the resovoir are un matchable and you run about 4K along the reservoir prior to then heading off through the country park for the last KM. The course itself isn’t the easiest with a few hills near the end and it being a bit more of a trail route, but it is still a very enjoyable run that is well marshalled and has some very enthuastic people manning the turn around point!

03/06/2023: These posts from the early Parkrun days will be slightly sporadic as I hadn’t made a note of all of them. However, Parkrun no.10 was a special one. It culminated the last 10 weeks of Uni that we had taken up Parkrun and 13 of us ran in the last one before we all left for our hometowns, cheered on by quite a few course mates who made the sensible decision to have a coffee instead of running a 5K at 9am… I personally know which option I’d prefer though 😉. This happened to be Bognor Regis Parkrun’s 9th anniversary, so being a seaside town they ran a fancy dress competition. We all turn up in a variety of Hawaiian shirts, swim shorts, goggles, etc. however, being on a Musical Theatre course, we of course had one member (Jordan) who went all out and ran the entire 5K in Armbands, An inflatable tyre and Flippers!!!! He of course won the box of Heroes and managed to do it in under 50 minutes which considering his footwear was mightily impressive.

So, no better place to start this blog than with the day that not just got me into Parkrun, but started my whole running journey.