V is for Valentines and its enthusiastic Volunteers
The final bank holiday weekend in May was blessed with sunshine as we set off on search of parkrun letter V. My original plan was to do Victoria Dock in London but the exhibition on at the Excel Centre this weekend had taken over part of the course, meaning parkrun was cancelled. The comms was good so I knew in advance, which brought us instead to Essex and a lovely park in Ilford called Valentines.
The clockwise journey around the M25 and M11 was uneventful — indeed we beat the Google Maps journey time estimate by a good 10 minutes (and there was no speeding involved officer). The event website course instructions had identified four potential car park areas and we were the first car parked up in the Melbourne Road bays at twenty past eight. The park has excellent facilities with toilets, a café close to the start and plenty of bench seating.
We took the compulsory photo by the start sign and my British Heart Foundation running top was a conversation opener with a local guy who has also done some fundraising for them. He had also benefited from their research programme having had a heart condition diagnosed, followed by some life saving surgery. He’s a year older than me and is back running now and from our conversation, thoroughly enjoying his parkruns.
And so the work that BHF does is clearly making a difference — if you want to ‘pay it forward’ and support my fundraising then that would be appreciated.
Sandeep did the first timers briefing and the response to her opening question of “whose doing the Alphabet Challenge” brought a lot of raised hands. Clearly the cancellation in London had swelled the total of 256 participants taking part today. The furthest visitor was from Manchester and the line of questioning from Sandeep established that she wasn’t a football fan, which I suspect could have made her a friend for life if she had answered United!
The course is entirely on paved paths, with two laps around the perimeter of the park and a short out and back start/finish straight. RD Satha did the start line announcements, with a lot of joy for a local participant Fiona doing her 200th event today. Every week is an opportunity to recognise and share the achievements of others — it’s always uplifting.
Following a 3–2–1 we were off, following a left had turn circuit of the park, past the boating lake, through the car park area, around the lake, past the cricket pitches and tennis courts. And the hi-viz hero marshals were all very supportive — the guy at the turn point from the start/finish we passed three times and each circuit he had a different motivational technique. I particularly liked the “whoosh” of energy chant he gave us at the start of lap two!
And by the café was a lady marshal with her young daughter in her arms. Louise took quite a shining to them both as we spotted them after the event for a celebratory high-five with the child. Thank you to all the volunteers for your support.
And today I crossed the finish line in position 36, in 23 and a half minutes, second in age category. That’s pretty consistent with my recent events which is pleasing.
I do like to highlight what event organisers do that is a novel approach, and having had my bar code swiped by the DoE service volunteers I was directed towards a covered seating area to return my token. Clearly someone has an interest in gardening as what they had setup was series of black seed trays with a sequenced number where you put your finish token.
What a really simple idea that must reduce the sorting effort, and also help spot any missing tokens whilst everyone is still in the park.
Whilst waiting for Louise to finish I started chatting to the Manchester tourist, a young woman called Alex. She was down in London for the Ride London cycle sportive tomorrow (as well as collecting her letter V), and that gave us an instant connection as I had done the cycle event in its inaugural year, which was 2013 as it was the year after the London Olympics. I know she’ll have a blast tomorrow.
And then when Louise came into sight, Alex was having her photo taken by the sign, which I also wanted to use in the background to photograph my wife finishing.
I don’t know who photobombed who, but it was all part of the parkrun banter and camaraderie that makes each event unique and enjoyable.
For today’s roll call of participants who names start with V, then the multi-cultural diversity of London came up trumps. A shout out to Victor, Victoria, Vidyadhar, Vinay, Vincenzo, Vipul, Virginia, Vishay who all ran today, in the lovely spring weather.
