Saturday 4th May
Let’s all pretend that this was here the whoooole time…. Guest writer here and just like a couple of parkruns previously, I’m fashionably late. I’m Becca and I’m the lady in the photos that isn’t Rosie!
On May 4th (be with you) in a park far, far away … Two friends are battling to complete the challenge they have set themselves before time runs out. The heroes have found themselves in a strange land south of the River Wear in Becca-obi’s i10 with R2J2 navigating…
OK. Serious now. We set off to Darlington South Park to tick off one of the more southern parkruns in the region. I live in Durham City so it made sense for Rosie to come to mine and for me to drive us both to Darlington with Rosie’s superior navigation skills. Rosie was having a few …issues… that day and managed to forget everything but her barcode. So after lending her my bankcard to pick up a few essentials we were on our way!
Darlington is a fairly flat three lap course around a rather picturesque park and we made it in time to catch the first timer’s briefing and for a quick warm up. It was at that point that Rosie realised she had even left her Garmin at home!! After having a good laugh (and reminding her that if it’s not on Strava, did it even happen?!) she resigned to recording her run on Strava on her phone and relying on her barcode time.
Rosie would normally put her stats in here, but to be honest I never look at mine beyond looking at my time, which was 39:15 and Rosie did very well (even if there is no Garmin official record…)
Course Location: 3.5/5
The park itself was relatively easy to find driving in from the A1 and the post code worked pretty much spot on with the sat nav. With that being said, the parking let the run down a tiny little bit. There didn’t seem to be any designated parking for the area and you need to rely on finding a spot on the surrounding streets. We managed to find somewhere near to the entrance and to find the starting area with relative ease though.
Course Difficulty: 2/5
The park itself is relatively flat with one particularly steep incline near to the end of each lap and therefore right before you reach the finish area. It does make it that little bit more difficult if you like an empty-the-tank-type finish, but livens up the flat three lap course. I’m not really a fan of laps and especially laps that are short enough that means that as a back of the pack runner I’m overtaken by a significant portion of the runners. Although this time I distracted myself by counting the number of women that lapped me before Rosie came round.
Course enjoyability: 3.5/5
South Park in Darlington was a lovely location for a run and seemed to have all of the features that make up a stereotypical British park; there’s a children’s play area, a bowling green, a duck pond, a bandstand, a large playing field, a cafe and an aviary with a partridge in a pear tree… Seriously though, the park did look lovely and we both said we’d like to go back to just sit in it for a while. It’s a shame however that the parkrun route sticks to three laps of the smaller top area.
Overall Parkrun Experience: 3.5/5
Generally Darlington was a fairly enjoyable experience. The course wasn’t too difficult but all of the elevation was in a single hill near to the finish (rude!), it was easy enough to find and the park itself is fairly pretty. I think I’d probably have scored it slightly higher but the shorter laps bring it down slightly.
Rosie's north east parkrun challenge 