Race Report: Pennington Flash Parkrun 25/02/2012

Well it was the morning after the night before, the night before being the Striders' awards ceremony, and myself and Michael met to go and run the Pennington Flash park run. So with a belly still full of cheese and crackers and the hilarious memory of Michael demonstrating the Lithuanian wife lift with the help of Catherine we headed off.

We arrived somewhere near Leigh in Manchester and parked in a free car park somewhere near the start of the event. Now by somewhere near I mean that neither of us had a clue how to get to the start from where we had parked but hey ho it was free. We spied Another runner in the car park the giveaway was the usual glow of a HI-viz jacket. Now as an aside I don't know why people wear these during the day time but it served a purpose for us as this local runner led us to the start and gave us a rundown of the course and more importantly told us where the cafe was for afters.

At the start line it was buzzing with runners from all over the local area and some from further afield as I also ran into 2 fellow runners from my local parkrun in Ilford who were up to do the Blackpool Half. After the usual pre-race chit chat and intro we thanked the volunteers and the race started. The course was a three lap route around the inner part of the park taking in two large hills one being considerably steeper than the other. Having topped the second hill it was all downhill from there to restart the lap. The downhill was a little hazardous and had all the right properties for a hilarious if not somewhat painful fall as the steepest part of the descent also contained a mini steeple jump. Some of you might be sad to know that no Striders fell at the first, second  or third fence of the park run national so apologies!

As far as the race goes it was a good training run for myself and I placed fourth in 18:55 having been schooled by a couple of lads who could have been 15 years old at a push but none the less they ran a superb race. At the finish Michael told me that the bloke who placed third who I had been trying to track down throughout the race had won the Sunrise to Sunset Challenge so I was fairly happy to just be able to keep a bungee cord on the back of his jersey, albeit a rather large stretched one.

All in all a good park run which could be made  better by lengthening the laps as the park was easily big enough to plan another route. A good race and time was had by all and I returned home in my own car, waited for my results to come through on my own laptop and later that night enjoyed an alcoholic beverage bought by myself unlike the kids who beat me!

 For more information visit the Parkrun website.

Chris C.