Saturday 3 January 2015

Dartford parkrun 24 - The 'b' course, rain and a return of the clunkiness

The forecast was for heavy rain all morning, and at first it was spot on. I left home at 7.20am. I was under-dressed. I got wet. I went on a course inspection with Richey (ED) and Anoushka (RD). The end of the grassy path was muddy and becoming waterlogged. We decided to switch to the 'b' course.

We put out the signage. I was drenched and freezing cold. The Dartford Harriers clubhouse was not available for use. I went to the public toilets and tried to warm my hands with the hand drier. It worked. However my legs and feet were freezing and I couldn't warm them up.

i'll just pretend i was running so fast that the camera couldn't capture me [photo:dani]

In order for the 'b' course to finish in the right place, the start line has been located about 200 metres away from the standard start line. We all headed over there for the pre-run briefing. Then we were sent on our way around the park. By this time the rain had eased off to a light drizzle.

The 'b' course takes place over 3 laps of the main side of the park and completely cuts out the need to cross the bridge and enter the grass and trail section. In order to squeeze the three-and-a-bit laps in, it is necessary to complete Mick Jagger's Leg three times instead of just once on a normal parkrunday.

In theory this course should be faster than the 'a' course, but after standing around letting my legs and feet get colder and colder, they really didn't have any life in them at all, so I resigned myself to the fact that this was not going to be a great running day for me.

looping around at the end of mick jagger's leg [photo:dani]

Judging by the results, not many people actually managed to take advantage of the quicker course and only 7 runners ran a new personal best. Maybe it was all down to the weather. Maybe not. Anyway, I was not on barcode scanning duty at this event, so I waited for the tail runner, Brian, to pass by on his third lap and then I followed in his footsteps and collected the signs as he and his tail-runees had passed them.

Wet. Freezing cold. In need of some food and a warm drink. The core team all headed over to the pub to have some breakfast and process the results, but as I hadn't brought any trousers with me, I popped into Primark en-route to furnish myself with some of their finest tracksuit bottoms, which I really was in desperate need of.
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