Parkrun tourism: Gladstone parkrun

We recently did some parkrun tourism at Gladstone parkrun in North West London. We were staying at a hotel in Wembley for the weekend to celebrate my daughter’s 18th birthday and it was the closest parkrun.

Parkrun tourism is where you run a parkrun somewhere other than your regular ‘home’ parkrun. It could just be the next one up the road or it could be one on the other side of the world. Some people do tourism nearly every week. Others never do it. We just tend to do it when we need to be somewhere other than home at 9am on a Saturday.

We’ve run Gladstone before (in July 2o22), so had actually intended to run Canons Park, which is also close to Wembley. Canons Park was cancelled for the weekend though. We considered others – looking at both tubes and driving, as we had our electric car with us, but none of them were very viable.

As an added complication, I was also recovering from Covid. I’d only decided at about midnight on the night before that I was going to give it a go. It’s a good job I’d packed my running kit and barcode ‘just in case’.

The nearest tube station to Gladstone parkrun is Dollis Hill on the Jubilee line. The parkrun is a pleasant 10 or 15 minute walk from Dollis Hill. This time though, we decided to drive. Because it’s also a 10 or 15 minute walk from our hotel to the Wembley Stadium tube station. With me recovering from Covid, I wanted to minimise the additional exercise I was doing. There is free on street parking close to the start line.

The runners meet for the briefing on a flat tarmac area close to a children’s playground. There is just one toilet in the park and it’s a few minutes’ walk from the briefing area – up a hill.

Interestingly, there was no purple sign for photos! (You will see from all my previous parkrun tourism posts that I always pose with the purple sign, as do most parkrun tourists.) There were also pacers with no pacer vests and a blind runner with a guide with no VI guide runner vests.

Once the briefing was finished, the run director sent the runners to the start line in time order. The start is quite tight and goes across a fairly narrow railway bridge. There’s definitely no room for overtaking, so it is important that everyone starts in order.

I’d decided 10 minute miles would be good for me, so I started uncharacteristically far back in the field. I’d told myself that if I was struggling, I would walk or even drop out.

The course begins in the south part of Gladstone park, but is essentially two laps of the north of the park. The start is a long uphill. It’s not extremely steep, but it’s not exactly gradual either. It’s pretty much all on tarmac path, so although there might be puddles (and there were when we were running it), it’s never going to be thick mud.

After the long uphill, there’s a bit of downhill, then a bit of flat and a longer bit of downhill. On a clear day, you get good views across the park and you can clearly see Wembley Stadium in the distance. The course is then largely flat as you approach the end of the first lap.

The second lap begins just after the railway bridge. You only go back over the railway bridge at the end of the course, as you head to the finish line. The finish line is on grass and this bit was very muddy indeed!

When I first started running, my calves hurt, which I’m totally blaming on Covid. I also had a brief feeling of being unwell. I decided I would probably drop out. But a few seconds later, my legs eased, I was enjoying the cold air and the warm sun. The feeling of being unwell instantly lifted. I’d had a very retro dose of Covid, with the dry cough. My main worry was that I would start coughing and be unable to stop. So I carried a bottle of water with me. I didn’t cough and I didn’t need the water.

My husband finished in 23 minutes. I ended up going slightly faster than my planned 10 minute miles and finished in 29:21. I felt on top of the world and I was so glad I’d done it. My husband was faster than last time he ran Gladstone parkrun and I was of course a lot slower. Coincidentally, the last time I did it, I was 10 days post-Covid.

There were 313 runners and walkers the week we took part, which was slightly higher than average. The number of participants seems to range from about 130 to 300.

Everyone has to make their own decisions about when is right to return to running after Covid or any other virus. Some people may need to wait weeks afterwards, depending on how ill they were and how fit they were beforehand. After Covid (this was my third dose), I always start back with shorter distances and a slower pace. I find I can build back up quickly and am generally back to normal within a week or two of testing negative, but of course everyone is different. At Gladstone parkrun, I gave myself permission to stop running if I needed to, but I found I didn’t need to.