This post explains a bit more about me, my parkrun journey, and how my Pedal to parkrun project came to be.
I love a project.
My favourite projects generally involve the outdoors, being active, and elements of challenge and adventure. I’m also partial to a bit of “type 2 fun”. I’m not a natural at pottering or wandering. Having a sense of purpose makes me happy – I’m a planner, an organiser.
Structuring something as a project is also how I motivate myself to actually stick at it. Otherwise I can be a bit flakey. I’ve started and cancelled three gym memberships since I moved to Nottingham 12 years ago because, after a sudden burst of enthusiasm, my interest always wanes.
Last summer, I completed a 100km (62 mile) ultra-hike with a friend as part of an Action Challenge event in the Peak District. I knew preparation would be key if I was to have any hope of completing it, so for four months I went out hiking pretty much every weekend, eventually racking up 370 training miles. The challenge took us just under 27 hours and was the toughest thing I’ve ever put myself through, but we did it!
Afterwards, once the sore feet had subsided and I’d had a few days of doing very little, the joy of the achievement started to wear off and I found myself feeling a bit lost. What next?
If you’re wondering what on earth this has got to do with cycling or parkrun, bear with me…
I did my first parkrun in March 2016.
I’d never really run before that. Well, unless you count the time I volunteered to represent my school at XC to get an afternoon off lessons, and upon finishing promptly vomited all down myself on the finish line. Or the one time in my adult life when I’d pulled on my trainers and set off from my house with a can-do attitude/unrealistic expectations, thinking “how hard can it be!?” and returned very soon after declaring that running wasn’t for me after all.
So when Ian, my husband who had just discovered parkrun when graduating from a Couch to 5k course he’d done at work, tried to convince me that I should go along with him I was pretty skeptical. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it and, quite honestly, I thought I’d hate it. But I went anyway.
Fast forward to today and I’ve completed 93 parkruns in 30 different locations, including three on Christmas Days. (I’ve also done a smattering of 10k events and a couple of half marathons so I do now occasionally allow myself to say I’m a runner).
There’s lots to love about parkrun. It’s free, it’s friendly and inclusive, and it’s fun. But there are two things that I think are particularly awesome (1) there are parkruns all over the place, and (2) I can track my progress against a multitude of different challenges. I’m not too bothered about my time or my PB. I’ll never be particularly fast and I’m ok with that. But I really like to visit parkruns in new locations, and to work towards my overall milestones. I’ve found the best way to keep track is with the 5k app but there is also the Running Challenges browser extension.
Not too long after my first parkrun, I decided to work towards the “Alphabeteer” challenge. This involves completing a parkrun beginning with every letter of the alphabet (apart from X).
We’re blessed with a great many parkruns in Nottinghamshire so I’ve managed to tick off quite a few fairly close to home. I’ve driven a fair way too. So far my furthest journeys have been to Valentines parkrun in Ilford, Jersey Farm parkrun in St Albans, and Queen Elizabeth parkrun near Portsmouth. For the first two, I drove down alone after work on the Friday, stayed in AirBnB rooms overnight, and drove back pretty much straight after the run. The parkruns were both great – Valentines parkrun even had a fantastic group cool-down session afterwards – but the overall experience wasn’t. So I persuaded my Dad to come with me to do Queen Elizabeth parkrun and make a weekend of it in Hampshire, which was really nice.
I’ve bagged almost all my letters now – I only have U and Z left to go.
And this is where the cycling comes in…
Z is the only parkrun letter you can’t do in the UK. A long time ago, I hatched a plan to cycle to Poland – at the time the home of the closest parkrun beginning with Z. It never happened because of Covid. More recently, when I finally allowed myself to start planning again, I discovered that a new parkrun had started in The Netherlands – Zuiderpark parkrun in The Hague.
So, I changed my plans – more about that in a future post.
I managed to convince Ian to come with me on the trip, after agreeing to his two non-negotiable conditions: (1) The trip must be outside cricket season, and (2) no camping.
Our route will take in two parkruns – a week after Zuiderpark we’ll do Unisee parkrun, in Bremen, Germany. It’ll be a 700-mile, two-week European cycling and parkrunning odyssey!
We’ve done a bit of cycle touring in the past. We’ve cycled the Sustrans C2C, Way of the Roses, and Coast and Castles South routes, and in 2018 we spent four days touring around mid-Wales on a route I had devised myself without looking at the elevation profile – whoops!
To remedy this, in 2019 we took on the much flatter Norfolk Coast Cycleway, this time accompanied by Ian’s daughter Ellie, who was 11 at the time.
All this is to say that although cycle touring isn’t completely new to us, our experiences to this point have always been in the UK and never longer than five days or 195 miles in total. So, this trip will be a challenge, but hopefully a lot of fun too!
So why Pedal to parkrun?
Once I’d got stuck into planning the trip, I felt my sense of purpose returning.
And so I thought, why stop there? This could be the perfect thing to focus my adventures on – cycling to parkruns!
I love to travel but I feel increasingly conflicted about flying. Pedal to parkrun will give me a way of adventuring and travelling that has a relatively low environmental impact. That’s not to say I’m never going to fly again. I just got back from a week of hiking across Gran Canaria, and I already have a holiday to Croatia planned for later this year. But planning lower impact trips definitely has an appeal.
I’m also mindful of the need to plan adventures around my full-time job, my family, my two dogs, and my commitments as a regional YesTribe leader. Other than the European trip, most of my 2022 Pedal to parkrun adventures will probably be a lot closer to home, as I’ve already committed a lot of my remaining annual leave to other things this year.
I think I’ll sometimes get a train to a reasonable starting point and then cycle from there for one or two days. I’m also not going to be too rigid or purist about things. If I can’t get a Friday off work and it makes more sense to get the train to the parkrun and then cycle back instead I might do that occasionally too.
After completing my A-Z, I think my next goal will be to complete 50 different parkruns, including all the remaining ones in the East Midlands.
I hope you’ll find my website and this blog interesting and enjoy following my adventures. Perhaps it will even inform, inspire, or entertain you. I like writing – I always keep a journal anyway when I travel, and hopefully blogging will give me some accountability to keep going!
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