Drove over to Leeds parkrun from my mum's in York, arriving in plenty of time for a good warm-up, a bit of stretching and a jog around the park before joining the other 243 runners on the start line. Hearing all the Yorkshire accents made me feel a little home-sick!
After the normal announcements, including presentation of 50-parkrun shirts and 100-parkrun jackets, we got off promptly and headed diagonally across the middle of the park and down to the far corner. From there it's more or less two-and-a-half laps anticlockwise.
I've only run this course once before, last October, when I recorded quite a poor time by my own standards, and I'd forgotten how hilly it is. Nothing out of the ordinary, but not as flat as Cannon Hill or Brueton parkruns, and so less conducive to PB performance. Nevertheless, I was not far off that pace up to the last kilometer. There I encountered a bit of crowding, but once through that I picked up the pace and managed to overtake a couple of guys in the last 200 metres or so, who both turned out to be in my age group. Hence I won the group, with them second and third! Chatting with the second-placed VM50-54 afterwards I discovered that like me he was an 'ex-pat' Yorkshireman visiting family.
I was again impressed with the organisation, and the field, huge compared to ours, was processed very efficiently. The results were on the web site, and emailed to finishers, before I got home. 24th of 244, and my third best 5km time. As ever, many thanks to all the volunteers. I shall be reporting back to the Cannon Hill team, and I shall be back!
My email to the club membership secretary elicited a nice response, and she tells me that she'll pass my comments on to the committee.
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