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al wrote:Well, they are finally starting a Parkrun near where I live, so I am planning to do my first Parkrun at the Inaugural Cannock Chase event on Saturday 19th November. The time will be shocking as I am unfit even by my standards, but I am looking forward to it.

Any tips for a newbie?

Good stuff Al

Try and get some training runs in beforehand, just a mile or 2 miles if you can...

Don't do any running the night before and be sure to stretch and warm up for a few mins before you start especially in the cold weather....

Try not to get swept along by the crowd for the first 1k or so, try and keep to a pace that is comfortable for you...

Don't each to much or too close to parkrun time, I normally have a banana around 8ish...

And most of all ENJOY!!!!

Going Underground wrote:

al wrote:Well, they are finally starting a Parkrun near where I live, so I am planning to do my first Parkrun at the Inaugural Cannock Chase event on Saturday 19th November. The time will be shocking as I am unfit even by my standards, but I am looking forward to it.

Any tips for a newbie?

Good stuff Al

Try and get some training runs in beforehand, just a mile or 2 miles if you can...

Don't do any running the night before and be sure to stretch and warm up for a few mins before you start especially in the cold weather....

Try not to get swept along by the crowd for the first 1k or so, try and keep to a pace that is comfortable for you...

Don't each to much or too close to parkrun time, I normally have a banana around 8ish...

And most of all ENJOY!!!!

My top tip is not to go off too fast at the start. You'll pay for it later. Ignore everyone who overtakes you - they are probably people whose fastest time is better than yours, so were always going to get you - they just started slowly.

Oh did it rain yesterday. I assume very few PBs in the mud and the rain!

We have an updated spreadsheet!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

My Exeter Riverside time is safe for now.

So, yesterday I turned up to the Cannock Chase Visitor Centre for both their and my inaugural Parkrun. The temperature was around freezing point, but it was nice and sunny. The start and finish points are in slightly different places, with the finish being by the cafe, and the start being a more remote point, so as I knew it would be 'interesting' with car parking I got there early and loitered by the cafe. The event is being co-managed by four different running clubs (Rugeley, Chase, Chasewater and Stafford) but there were lots of running tops from other clubs in evidence - Telford clubs gave a good showing.

At about quarter to nine, the Run Director announced that newbies and tourists should go to the start for the pre-race briefing, so a good number wandered over. I did find this bit slightly disappointing, as not only could I barely hear what he was saying, despite being stood basically in front of him two people away, the info given was all on the website anyway.

After this, I could see there were a lot of runners, so in order to heed the advice given of not starting too quickly, I moved to nearly the back. Apparently the event was started by our local MP, but I only found this out afterwards. Conditions underfoot were frosty, and therefore slippy for the 'elites', but did not bother my much slower pace. I was more concerned about avoiding dogs and buggies, but as we started to thin out this stopped being an issue.

The first bit is a straight on tarmac, but then you turn off and two one loop, then a larger loop mostly on paths that used to be tarmacced, but haven't been resurfaced for years, or a little bit on gravelly trails. Mud wasn't a particular issue except on a couple of corners. Considering where the event is, it was surprisingly flat, but there were still a few dips and rises. I think it is approaching a 3 on *****'s rating system.

I managed to keep running throughout, except for a few seconds at the beginning of the biggest rise, and paced myself well enough to put in a strong finish, overtaking three others on the approach to the finish. In the queue in the funnel we found out that there were so many runners that they had run out of tokens, so the results were being written down manually. They has expected between 300 and 400 runners, but ended up with 569 which made it the seventh busiest Parkrun that day - the first time that an inaugural had made the top ten and so also the busiest inaugural ever (they only had 447 tokens). I came placed in 528th place with a time of 43:43, and an age grade rating of 31.13%, probably giving me the lowest ever finish of a tube challenger!

One thing that did intrigue me was that as I was nearing the end, and was on the short bit of overlap with the initial shorter loop, the tailrunner was just ahead of me about to start the longer loop. This did not please the Marshall near me who was complaining that he would be there forever! On the results, the bottom three runners had no barcode so maybe the tailrunner didn't want it on their record!

It is a very nice course (difficult not to be pretty there) but will be really biting if windy in certain places. I will run it again at some point, but I don't have the time to go regularly unfortunately. It will be interesting to see what the natural attendance figures end up being.

(Neil - could you add me to the spreadsheet please)

al I have a much slower time not that us much comfort to you.

Don't be put off Al, that was clearly a one off situation... First time I have ever heard of a Marshall complaining at any course...

palkanetoijala31 wrote:al I have a much slower time not that us much comfort to you.

Thanks Andi, but I was thinking more along the lines of position number (528), as it was such a high turnout

Going Underground wrote:Don't be put off Al, that was clearly a one off situation... First time I have ever heard of a Marshall complaining at any course...

It didn't put me off, he wasn't complaining about me after all! I did have some sympathy for him, as she was 1.75km in to the race at a time of nearly 42 mins, giving an estimated finish time of 2 hours exactly. It was damned cold to be stood still for that length of time. I know that's against the spirit of parkrun though...


P.S. I forgot to thank Andi, Neil and Kev for the advice, which apart from not starting too quickly and not getting plastered, I successfully ignored

I can't remember exact details, but I know other Challengers have had times in the 40+ minute range

al wrote:(Neil - could you add me to the spreadsheet please)

Added.

PW for me today 52:48 at Bedfont

Going Underground wrote:PW for me today 52:48 at Bedfont

Maybe the spreadsheet needs a PW column ... my first Parkrun in 12 weeks today, and I did 26:44. Not helped by me dropping my phone out of my pocket at the start and having to fight back through the advancing hoards to get it. That's the first time I've ever gone the "wrong way" at the start!

I've done 12.5k in the last two days, so a day off for me tomorrow.

If you did you would want to exclude tail running duties, wouldn't you?

al wrote:If you did you would want to exclude tail running duties, wouldn't you?

Interesting point - I'd have to ask people what their non-tail-running PW was. I don't think too many people have done tail runner, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Well, I have several 'worst time' categories.

1) Default time (stopwatch failure at Burgess) 59:59
2) Hobbling time (Injured at Worcester) 46:40
3) Tail Runner time (At MK) 45:32
4) Actually trying, first ever parkrun time (Also MK) 44:54