I is for Itchen Valley and Immersive conditions
The second December event in my Alphabet Challenge was on NYE to deepest Hampshire, to the Itchen Valley country park that is adjacent to Southampton Airport. This is over an hours journey from home so meant a pre-dawn drive through the local Berkshire lanes before joining the M3 to go south.
The weather forecast was dreadful — a yellow warning advisory of rain — so quite different conditions to the light frost and winter sunshine of a week earlier. This was also an event that Louise and I were doing together, as we were meeting friends who live locally. This will be an advantage of going to new parkrun venues that provide a convenient excuse to catch-up with different people who live outside of our local area.
The country park is a multi-purpose leisure venue which is also home to Go Ape — where you can traverse through the trees on high ropes. We have one close to us in Bracknell and it’s where our daughter-in-law Maxine works (and how she first met our son Harry when he was working there.) So it’s a familiar brand.
The parkrun run course was described as a single lap — which is true — but follows a number of different parts of the park that extend out from the main field which is the start and finish point. The initial section follows bridleways (watch out for the horse poo we were told in the briefing), and then the second section twists and turns through the far side of the park that lies adjacent to the Go Ape facility.
So the “immersion” factor was not only the variety of surfaces underfoot but also the weather. Persistent rain and a strong breeze, following on from a series of Atlantic lows rolling across southern England this week meant that the common factor was muddy puddles. Proper winter cross country training in fact!
I do now have a ‘uniform’ that I wear to each parkrun event. You can always spot me in the red British Heart Foundation top, which for those that follow me on the course becomes a billboard of motivational messages that I think are quite fitting to a wet and windy day — break sweat, beat heartbreak and be a (BHF) Champion. Don’t forget that you can sponsor me to help beat heart disease.
Meeting friends today meant that we also ‘recruited’ a new parkrunner. I do a lot of cycling with Steve (who is a ‘retired’ triathlete) but he does less running these days as a legacy of knee injuries. But to be fair, he was curious to discover what the community of parkrun was all about and agreed to sign-up and run with one of his dogs Willow, a black flat coat retriever.
We had all arrived in good time, ready to run, to take in the pre-run briefing. And due to the weather the usual parkrun groundsheet had been upgraded at Itchen Valley to a small igloo tent, which was perfect the keep everyone’s bags dry. Nice touch folks!
Our group members run at different paces so we agreed to ‘do our own thing’ and meet at the finish. I splashed my way round in 25 minutes, finishing first in age group in position 14. I then was able to take an action shot of Steve and Willow as they sped towards on the finishing line. The dog had loved the activity, and I suspect the attention from other participants — although she did spend quite a bit of time laid on the kitchen floor when she got home!
Shortly afterwards Louise finished, and out of earshot I said to Steve that I suspected these were not conditions she would not have relished. At one level my assumption was correct, as she initially commented that next time she wanted to be dropped off en-route to the start with Steve’s wife Jeanette (who had stayed home looking after their second black dog Bella who is recovering from some minor veterinary surgery).
But in a more significant way my assumption was incorrect. Louise had turned up. She hadn’t complained about the weather. And she had completed the run, commenting later in the day that she had just gone straight through the mud and puddles without any regard for getting splashed and dirty.
If we had been at home she wouldn’t have chosen to go out for a run on the streets this morning, but she did want to turn up and compete at parkrun. And that’s the difference that makes the difference.
Although I won’t embarrass her with any post run photos — those are my muddy legs not hers!
