Intro

Hiii! Welcome to my north east parkrun challenge blog.

This year, I made a challenge/goal for myself – to run ALL 24* parkruns in the North East of England. That is, according to the parkrun website. I found this map/list on their event page and decided to replicate it (the result of a procrastination at lunchtime at work one day!), print it off on A3 and stick it to my bathroom door!

* I’ve heard through the grapevine that there may be some new parkruns in the north east in 2019… I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled (that phrase still baffles me!) for those and will add them to the list over the year.

The ‘North East’ stretches from Alnwick** all the way down to Middlesborough. That’s quite a distance… although I live relatively central to that, it will mean some RIDICULOUSLY early mornings. Thankfully, one of my closest and longest friends (Becca, insta: @runner_bee) lives further south than me and wants to join me on this challenge/adventure, so we will be splitting up some of the journeys. With our ‘advanced’ maths skills, we have worked out that this roughly equates to 2 parkruns a month. We are working on a little something over the summer (to be confirmed), but I’ll keep that under wraps for now.

**Alnwick parkrun (officially known as ‘The Pastures’ parkrun), has LITERALLY just been added to this list. The first one starting this weekend. Reckon we’ll wait til the Summer for that one!

So I wanted to start this blog for a couple of reasons:

1. To make sure I actually see it through! (Nothing like a bit of social media accountability!)
2. To have and share a nice little record of each of the parkruns and my experiences running them
3. To actually review the parkruns and give other runners (both from the north east and those visiting the north east and hoping to do a little parkrun tourism) a little more info about each of them. I’m still working on a rating system!
4. To share the joy of running and parkruns with everyone! (I have taken that too far?!)

Well, I think that’s enough from me today. The first parkrun will be this Saturday (12th January) at… (drum roll please)…: WHITLEY BAY!

I really hope you all enjoy this blog as much as I think I will making it. Taraah! xx