My Journey to parkrun #100

Today I took part in my 100th parkrun, it has been a long journey to get here - 8 years in fact! But well worth it. What a ride!

Let's start from the beginning...

I still remember my first parkrun like it was yesterday.  Although I had heard of parkrun pretty much when it started in Glasgow in late 2008.  I didn't actually participate in one till June 2009 in Glasgow (now Pollok) parkrun in its 30th event.  The reason for this was because I thought it was just a meet up in a park where you go running with a group of people at a certain time.  I had been running for years since then and apart from doing the odd long run with my mate Alex, I never considered running in a group.  It was very much a solo activity for me.  That was until my brother and his wife did one in June 2009 and encouraged me to try it out.  I was blown away by it. The organisation, the way its set up, the stats! oh I love stats!   Yes it is essentially a place where you can meet and hang out with running buddies but it is so much more than that.  It's environment where you can improve, learn, give back and may I even say race (don't shout that one too loudly though ;-) ).

I was so impressed by what I experienced and the very next week I wanted to volunteer.  In those days I was very much a long distance runner aiming for marathons and halfs.  And in fact apart from a 5k I did in school, this was really my first official 5k.  It was from volunteering that a few folk encouraged me to join a club and later in October 2009 I joined Giffnock North.  From 2009 to 2011, I would end up volunteering a lot as I liked how it was just such an easy environment to meet people.  I  still ran Pollok parkrun every now and then and my times toppled down from 25 minutes in my first parkrun, peaking in August 2010 a year later in just under 21 minutes.

In the middle of 2011 I started going off running as I failed to get prepared enough for my goal races. My training went downhill from there and eventually I left Giffnock North and the parkrun community.  I did try to get back into running on various occasions but I had put on weight and I lost my fitness fast.  In fact I could hardly run a slow mile without several walk stops.  I wasn't depressed because of it or anything like that.  I just accepted it and became lazy. It wasn't till 3 years later in August 2014 when my parkrun journey would start again.  I decided that I needed a change and wanted a kind of easy way back in.  So since Strathclyde parkrun is a totally flat course, I decided to make that my course to get myself back on the road to fitness.  It worked and I got into the routine of running parkrun every week.  Eventually I went back to Pollok and then started doing the tourist thing and visiting other parkruns across the west of Scotland.  It became almost an addiction in a good way.  Between 2009 and 2011 I did 16 parkruns.  From August 2014 to July 2015 I had done 34 meaning I had earned my 50 t-shirt.  I almost see it as parkrun uniform, wearing it pretty much every parkrun I do.  2016 I did do less parkruns than 2015 as I tried to increase my distance a bit. But I still did my fair bit of touristing and now Pollok was back as my main parkrun.  This is shown through in my stats as my last 10 runs have been at Pollok.

I won't do a table ranking parkruns I have done from best to worse as I don't think that would be fair on the ones that would appear down the bottom of the list.  This is because people do a lot of work in all the events for nothing at all which I appreciate greatly and  I haven't found a parkrun yet that I wouldn't do again. But I will pick out the 3 events which I have enjoyed the most.  Top of the pile has to be Pollok as that is where it all began.  Then Eglinton as the route is just phenomenal.  Then Falkirk for "That hill".

Today was great. My whole family came down to support and I ran round with my brother.

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered at a parkrun and the directors who make it happen.

250 is the next landmark so will probably not be writing another one of these posts for at least 5 years :-)