Redcar parkrun

Saturday 6th July

Another weekend, another pre-major race parkrun. I think we’re a bit worried now that we won’t fit all the parkruns in, and as a result, we’re now regularly doing parkruns the day before our big running events. This time, the Great North 10km, and both of us were doing it. So after a little research on my favourite parkrun elevation profile website to find the next flattest parkrun in the North East, we decided on Redcar. And as sad as it sounds, we were also a little excited to do our first parkruns together as SW30-34.

Redcar is one of the further afield parkruns in the North East…I think there are only one or two further south anyway. Thankfully, Becca offered me a sofa and fat hippo takeaway (which didn’t take much persuading) the night before to make it slightly easier for me in the morning (it would have been a good hour and a half drive first thing otherwise!).  It was a glorious morning to drive down south to the parkrun, we got there in plenty of time and had a little explore of the park (i.e. the usual mission find the toilets!) before going to the parkrun debrief meet up. Given that we were both racing the next day, again, we were “taking it easy” for parkrun. I didn’t offer to pace anyone on this one, so instead created a little game for myself… let’s see how close I can get to an average pace of 9:00min/mi. I was very close, I ended with a 9:01min/mi pace!

My stats

• Time: 26:53 minutes
• Position: 79 / 206
• Female position: 12th
• Age category position (SW30-34): 1^st*
• Age-graded score: 55.05%

*I think I’m going to like being in our new age category!!!

Course location 4/5

Besides from it being reeeally far from Durham/Gateshead, and about a million roundabouts away, the postcode and directions from the parkrun page led us to the exact location of the park and the adjacent car park. We ended up about 20 minutes early, which was plenty of time to follow a few fellow parkrunners into the park and to the starting point. It’s a really beautiful park, with a lake in the middle and a few useful amenities. We quickly found the toilets, but unfortunately only one was available and it was apparent it isn’t cleaned particularly often. I did have a quick scout of the route to warm up my legs, but found myself surrounded by geese so that was quickly aborted.

For anyone who’s done Darlington South Park Run, Redcar is a little similar. It’s effectively just 3 laps of the park, but on the 3^rd lap, the finish is within the tennis courts. It’s a very pretty park, lots of foliage, a nice lake, some wild-life (I’m not talking about the residents of Redcar) and lots of play areas for the little ones if you like to bring them along to this sort of thing. There’s even a boating company if you fancy a go on the lake on one the pedalos (which was quickly tabooed by Becca after I suggested we could do it after parkrun… spoil sport!).

Course difficulty 2/5

In short, it’s 3 (eurgh!) flat (yaay!) laps of the park. It’s all tarmac paths, with a few small footbridges (which were big enough for Becca to not fall off this time!) and a couple of twists and turns which were well marshalled. I did like that the starting line was split up into two groups: those faster than 25 minutes, and those slower than 25 minutes. It did make it slightly easier to know where to put myself within the pack.

The finish within the tennis courts was a bit of a revelation for us. What a brilliant idea! You get a lovely flat stretch to do a sprint finish which is great for the PB seekers. And it also keeps all of the finishers out of the way from the people who have another lap to do too. They open up the back of the tennis courts too so that the faster runners can leave without disturbing people who are coming through the entrance for their glorious sprint finishes. This did mean that I could get back out onto the course to give Becca a little support from the sidelines.

Course Enjoyability 4/5

Despite the 3 laps, I really enjoyed this parkrun. It’s a very picturesque park and it’s big enough to not notice how far ahead some of the faster runners are. There are some pot holes and tree stumps which did make the course a little more technically challenging. I am a little surprised I didn’t absolutely stack it on more than one occasion (I am known to be very accident prone – I did once almost chop a finger off cutting into a quiche, thankfully 3 stitches later, it remains attached).

But back to the parkrun… it was very well organised by some very friendly marshals and volunteers. The one who gave us the debrief on the route was particularly ‘charismatic’ and entertaining. He definitely had that fun PE teacher vibe about him.

Overall rating: 4/5

A very enjoyable parkrun in a very pretty park. I guess that when you have such a pretty park like that, the only way to get the 5km distance in, is to run 3 laps. So I’ll take it in this instance. There was a lovely little café next to the lake too which we both enjoyed a drink at and converse about the parkrun and imminent 10k race. I think that if we found ourselves in the area, we would definitely do it again. There are quite a few in the Middlesbrough area, so we would have a few to choose from, but until we’ve done them all, it’s difficult to say which one we would do again.