Last week (yeah, I know i’ve been slack writing this up) Hannah and I travelled to Eastbourne for a stab at their Summer parkrun course. It meant leaving quite early as Eastbourne has been one of our longest travel times so far and without much idea of what the postcode was for SatNav we pre-empted trouble finding it. As it happens, it was quite complicated as typing “Shinewater Park” into my phone wasn’t adequate and took us to the middle of a nice new housing estate. After finding a few cars parked at the side of the nearby road with luminous attired people in we decided to follow suit and then…follow them.
Our first stop was the call of nature and after pondering whether there were any toilets we were guided by a very helpful, friendly lady to the nearby bushes. Well I say “guided”, she pointed, she wasn’t THAT friendly! I won’t criticise a parkrun for the lack of a toilet as it’s not something that tends to bother me and the bushes were spacious and luxurious, albeit a heaven for the exhibitionists out there.
We queued up for the start, 50% of the people seemed to be facing one way, the other 50% the other way but eventually we worked out which way it was going and the pre-race briefing was good. The course itself was a little odd and a very different experience to other Parkruns. For the most part it was flat as a pancake and covered a mix of gravel paths, concrete paths and grass. It started off going in what seemed like circles and I entertained myself by singing “Round and round the garden like a teddy bear” (although not out loud of course). It then went off on a huge loop away from the start allowing the race to essentially call itself a ‘one lap course’. Finally you come back past the start and are punished with another 800m or so which includes the only slight incline in the course before looping back to the start. Luckily I was mentally prepared for this, as not only did my watch say 4.2km when I went past the start, but I’d also overheard someone describe how that was ‘torture’ before we began.
Whilst this race was seemingly easy, I finished in a time of 21:05 which was some way short of my 5k PB. I’d recently been ill and not trained very hard but I don’t attribute that to my time. If anything it killed off two misnomers for me. Firstly, I no longer believe that a one lap course is better. I guess I’d toyed with this thought before, but I think a 5k split into 2 or more laps is actually, psychologically a bit easier to pace. This one and Richmond have taught me that. Secondly, I don’t believe a flat course is easier. I’ve got decent enough times here and at Nonsuch Park and don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the hills at Lloyd Park or Clair Park are the kind of things I need in a race, but the kind of inclines you get at Hove are actually ideal. I believe that with a gradual enough incline and decent enough surface for the corresponding decline, you actually get back more than you put in effort wise. Therefore, all things considered, I think this one belongs in between Hove Park and Banstead Woods in terms of how easy it is, only beating Banstead Woods because the hill on the second lap at Banstead is just a bit too much at that stage in the race!
A couple of other things that deserve a review. Firstly the scenery which is pretty good. There are some long periods where you run along paths which are nothing special exactly, but they are in nice park areas and are unhindered by large groups of people. The paths are also wide after you have completed the first 1km or so which makes way for the ability to overtake at your leisure. Secondly, the people there were ever so friendly. We only really got talking to a couple of people, but they made a proper effort to chat to us about how we found it, what other Parkruns we’d done etc and that was a really nice feature that gave it some brownie points. As a fairly introverted person I find it hard randomly approaching others for a chat, so it was nice that they talked to us. I got the vibe from all of the runners there that they were a friendly lot and I never felt out of place.
