Cannon Hill Park

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/cannon-hill/

With an (extended) family wedding up in Birmingham at the weekend, Hannah and I went straight to the parkrun map to see where we could get our 5k fix from. The obvious choice was Cannon Hill Park. I had never heard of it before being a soft Southerner, but it's a popular park for Hannah's family.

Not surprising as it was a big and beautiful park with plenty of room for a parkrun without having to run a silly number of laps. Nice scenery included well maintained flower beds, a funfair and a big lake with some giant swans gathering menacingly in the distance (they turned out not to be real!).

Pictured: The swans spy something whiter than them!

Not knowing the park we located the run director who was a friendly chap and pointed us to the guy doing the new runners briefing. A fun and theatrical explanation of the route was provided. It sounded dead complicated at that point but I knew I wouldn't be running at the front. The chap who gave us the directions was possibly the only person I encountered with a West Midlands accent by the way, but there was a Villa shirt and a Birmingham City shirt amongst the runners to re-assure me that we had indeed left Sussex.

I lined up on the start line with several gentlemen who were approximately four feet taller than me and it crossed my mind that I may be too far forward. This was confirmed when a guy behind me said to his friend "are you going sub-17 today?" and his friend said "no mate, I am taking it easy today, about 17:30". I held my tongue and just had to go with the flow over the first km (I ran it in about 3:35 to save face). The fast start didn't kill me and I dug deep to run another 4k in a similar fashion. Of course, my 5k always involves starting fast and gradually getting slower so it wasn't disappointing!

The route was reasonably flat. I guess at times we were going over slight inclines or declines but apart from the hill to the finish (how mean was that?!) it felt flat. There were some tight turns here and there but nothing that killed much speed. All on concrete I might add, which for me is ideal. The paths were wide (despite being warned of narrow paths), much wider than I am used to. 

Despite looking complicated on their website it wasn't particularly complicated at all. The field spreads out enough to just follow the chap ahead and with such a fast field it'd take some doing to get ahead of everybody! The marshals were spot on and you'd have to go a bit mad to go the wrong way. I was looking the wrong direction when I got to the lake in the final stretch but just about managed to turn myself around in time!

All in all, I always say it, but an enjoyable run and I got a PB. It was a very fast course. The people were friendly too. I had some banter from a couple of chaps at the end that said my time was disgustingly fast, all said in good jest as expected from a parkrun. I actually hope I can run this one again. Especially as it's now my PB course and the furthest away parkrun that I've done.