Whitley Bay parkrun

12th January 2019

The north east parkrun challenge officially commenced yesterday morning with a cold and breezy start at Whitley Bay. We joined another 495 runners for the coastal 5km and really enjoyed it!

I was pretty pleased with my time considering it was a new parkrun for me and I am still feeling a little the effects of the Christmas festivities (possibly overindulged on the pigs in blankets).

My stats:
Time: 25:33 minutes*
Position: 163 / 497
Female position: 21st
Age category position (SW25-29): 3rd
Age-graded score: 57.93%

*This in fact was for 3.18 miles (more on that below!)

So after a little debrief with Becca over a bacon buttie and drink, we came to a consensus on the following…

Course location: 3 / 5

We set off nice and early to get there this morning and glad we did. The postcode on the parkrun website almost got us to the start line. We were directed to a housing estate, which did look like it would be free to park in, but we decided to not piss off the residents and drove to a local designated car park. Just a couple of quid to park for 2 hours (thanks Becca!). It took a little navigation and a question to a fellow parkrunner to get to the start line but all in all it was relatively easy to get there.

Course difficulty: 2 / 5

The parkrun itself is predominantly a flat route on tarmac paths with only a small portion on a gravely path. It has a few undulations with a couple of short but steep hills and a narrow bridge crossing (possibly two small people could fit side by side, but if you’re a large person or a bit of a Pheobe runner, definitely only one person!).

Looks like my garmin thought I had run below sea level?!? Is that even possible?

Garmin’s representation of the elevation profile

I did find that the beginning of the run was a little disorganised, with a large wide group of people trying to funnel into a small path. Some people did run on the grass either side… like me… but just please beware of the park benches on the right hand side. I did almost run into one, which would likely have terminated my parkrun (and maybe even this challenge!) after a mere 20 strides!

Being at the coast does mean that it can get rather windy. We were relatively lucky yesterday with only mild-moderate winds. But, thankfully the course runs in both directions so it may be reassuring to know that if it is windy, you will likely have a tailwind at some point during the run.

Course enjoyability: 3.5 / 5

One of our favourite things about this run was that it was at the seaside and most of it was along the sea front. This definitely adds scenic value to the run.

It was almost 2 laps of the seafront and coming back up on to the links, with a slightly shorter second lap finishing on the promenade. I personally don’t like laps as I find it tough mentally, but these were large enough to not notice it as much. Also, Becca pointed out was that the laps were large enough so that she wasn’t lapped by the faster runners. Definitely a positive there.

We both felt that all the marshals were extremely friendly and supportive to all the runners. However, they probably could have done a slightly better job at moving the finished runners on the promenade away from the route for the people running the second lap (even though we were specifically told at the beginning of the run to move out of the way here!). Apparently it was a little difficult for the slower runners to get through this section. The finishing funnel was also little hectic and actually extended beyond the official finish line. We did, at that point, form two lines to collect the tokens, which could have been a little disastrous. But my official time was within a second of my garmin time so I think they were pretty on it and did do a good job here! I imagine this problem was mostly due to an increase in runners starting early on their new year’s resolutions.

I also couldn’t help but notice that both our garmin watches recorded a total distance of 3.18 miles – almost a 10th of a mile longer than 5km (tut tut!). I had a check on my pace (8:02min/mi average) and estimated my finish time to be under 25 minutes, so I guess the extra 10th of a mile added almost a minute on to my time. In hindsight, this is probably why I saw a few runners stopping their watches before the finish line and without going through the funnel.

Overall parkrun experience: 3 / 5

I think we both really enjoyed the atmosphere of this parkrun. The route was really pleasant and the marshals were very friendly. Just a few minor issues which may have been due to the new year surge of runners.

One massive bonus to this run is the discounted bacon buttie you can get if you present your barcorde at a lovely little Italian cafe called Di Meo’s. What a lovely little place! They did also offer an exceptional range of canoli (this took me back to Sicily when I was eating them on a daily basis!) too which I was SO close to buying.