E is for Edenbrook and English sparkling wine
My second October parkrun took me over to Hart Leisure Centre in Fleet for the Edenbrook country park run which is adjacent to the centre. It’s a relatively new event — it only started in 2022 and this was event number #26. It is already proving popular with nearly 300 participants.
Once again we were blessed with mild and sunny autumnal conditions, although had the run been 24 hours later then it would have taken place in a thunderstorm, which cancelled the planned triathlon club Sunday group cycle ride. But on the Saturday, I left home on my bike at first light to pedal the hour over to Fleet, admiring a gorgeous sunrise over the Finchampstead ridges — very atmospheric.
The location and start was easy to find as it was directly outside the leisure centre. With plenty of parking available, and access to the leisure centre facilities, you can see why this is truly an accessible event. The course was described by the Run Director as a lollipop, but which they mean an outward run along local paths before doing a couple of laps of the park itself, and then the same path back to the centre finish line. All very clearly signed with plenty of volunteers to marshal the sections of two-way runners along sections of the pathways.
There’s clearly some thought gone into the organisation and setup — perhaps as this is a newer event on the schedule — the best example being the finishers tokens. At my local PR in the summer I had helped out with token sorting — a manual exercise to group tokens into batches of ten before then sequencing them in readiness for the next event. It was all very fiddly, which was very much trumped by the Edenbrook volunteer team who have created a board with hooks which I can imagine is a great time saver as the tokens all have their own place to be stored — very creative.
As for the run it was one of my speedier efforts in 23m 31s, third in age group, with my finishing token hanging on hook 58 of the sorting board. And I took a slightly longer ride back home, passing a couple of the triathlon club cycle groups out for their planned Saturday rides. That was my exercise box well and truly ticked for the day.
And now to explain the reference in the title to English sparkling wine. In previous posts I have written about my daughter Anna and her husband Mark completing the London marathon. This has involved a family support team — beyond the training run support that I took part in — and that is the team behind the scenes that provide childcare to three children whilst their parents are out on their training runs and doing events. And as a way of saying thank you, they had arranged a wine tasting tour at Stanlake Park — which is a local grower and producer of English wines — to which parents were the guests of honour. So well done to Louise and Terry (Marks’s mother) for their support. Think of them in the same way that you see the same volunteers at your local parkrun each and every week, only minus the hi-vis jackets!
It was a great way for our family to celebrate a running achievement, and most definitely sorted the wine selection for Christmas — I can thoroughly recommend the Reserve Red and Rose Superior sparkling.
And finally, as I‘m starting to promote my blog more widely to the parkrun community following the events I have participated in, a brief reminder that as well as being a thoroughly enjoyable running challenge for myself personally, it’s also a chance for me to raise some money for the British Heart Foundation. You can read more of the reason why I am supporting this charity and if you want to donate you can do so here. Thank you!
