Parkrun tourism: Arrow Valley parkrun

My husband, sister and her family recently did some parkrun tourism at Arrow Valley parkrun in Redditch, Worcestershire. It’s a parkrun which had been recommended to us by a few people, so we were keen to try it.

Parkrun tourism is when you do a parkrun which isn’t your regular (‘home’) parkrun. Some people do it pretty much every week, some people never do it and others, like us, do it from time to time. Some people do it to complete various challenges, but we generally just do it because we need to be somewhere other than home at 9am on a Saturday. And sometimes we just do it for a change of scene.

We’d checked the website beforehand, so we knew the postcode we were heading for. We knew there were EIGHT free car parks in the park, with toilets at the visitor centre. What could possibly go wrong?

I always have a rule for parkrun tourism that we arrive at 8:30am to give us plenty of time to park, go to the toilet, find the start line and listen to the first timers’ briefing.

When we got in the car, the sat nav gave us at ETA of 8:33 – a 45 minute drive. Later in the journey, that adjusted to 8:31. We stopped at a McDonald’s for the toilet on the way, which wasn’t the best idea. That put our ETA back to 8:38, but at least we wouldn’t need to find the toilet when we arrived.

We drove to the postcode on the website and it was just a road! No sign of the huge park and no sign of the eight car parks. We pulled over to double check where we were and my brother-in-law appeared. They were lost too. So my husband looked at the sat nav screen in the car and basically drove towards the lake at the park. We found a car park easily and parked.

We asked another runner where the start was. ‘A long way away.’ My sister and niece needed the toilet, where was that? ‘Even further than the star line.’ It was already 8:48! While my sister and niece went for a ‘wild wee’, the rest of us jogged to the start line. We arrived just as the first timers’ briefing ended. Or so I thought.

It was the actual run briefing which had ended.

People gather for the briefing by the cafe and visitor centre, close to a playground. People leave their jumpers etc on the wall there. Then it was a short walk back the way we’d come to the start. There were a lot of people there and I wasn’t sure whether we’d positioned ourselves in the right place. I asked the man next to me if it was a ‘keep right, overtake on the left’ parkrun, but he didn’t know. Parkruns vary and it is important you know which it is.

I was still messing with my watch and my music when the run started very suddenly. There might have been a countdown, but I didn’t hear it. My husband and I both set off fast, with him some way ahead of me. The course went straight back past the playground and the cafe, then up a small incline. The path was quite narrow and crowded.

The course goes around the end of the lake, then into woodland. The scenery is very pleasant, but it’s all on tarmac, so no mud to contend with. There were a few puddles, which was to be expected after some very wet weather, and I did end up with wet trainers.

The course continues through the woodland before coming out at the far end of the lake, close to our car park. We then ran all the way down the side of the lake. There was a short downhill as we approached the start line ready for the second lap. Being round a lake, the course is essentially flat, but the second lap started with the small incline by the visitor centre again.

The second lap is shorter and stays right next to the lake for the whole lap. Interestingly, none of my sister’s family actually realised they’d run a different route for the second lap! The only time faster runners encounter slower runners and walkers, is the last half of the lake on the second lap, when the slower runners and walkers were still on their first lap.

When I’d looked at my watch on the run, I’d only been concentrating on the distance. As I ran down the side of the lake for the last time, I actually looked at my time and realised I was running very fast indeed. I was suffering and hanging on for dear life as I approached the finish line. Then I realised the finish line wasn’t the finish line – it was a sign pointing to the finish line, which was a few more metres down a path to the left. My whole family had the same shock as they approached the line.

I finished in 22:30, eighth female, first in my age category and with an age grading of 74.52%. To put my age grading into perspective, it was better than the man who finished third. That time was my fourth fastest parkrun ever, out of nearly 340 parkruns. (My two fastest were at Severn Bridge, including my PB at age 50, but I was wearing super fast Vaporfly trainers. At Arrow Valley, I was wearing my normal trainers which have nearly reached the end of their life.)

We all really enjoyed Arrow Valley parkrun and would go back. But my sister did witness some inconsiderate behaviour by a fast runner, who literally pushed between two women running together as he lapped them. The paths aren’t very narrow, but they are narrow enough that runners should respect the ‘keep right, overtake on the left’ rule. We definitely felt this wasn’t happening as well as it does at our home parkrun.

It is a busy parkrun, with 506 finishers when we ran it. If you’re going along to Arrow Valley, I would definitely recommend researching the car parks more thoroughly than we did or arranging to arrive earlier than we did! And, as ever with parkrun tourism, always check the parkrun’s own Facebook page before setting off, in case of unexpected cancellations.