parkrun Course Description: Norwich parkrun

The Norwich parkrun takes place in Eaton Park, which lies west of the City Centre. The http://www.friendsofeatonpark.co.uk/ website tells me that it covers over eighty acres and is the largest of the Norwich parks.

parkrunners meet at the bandstand within the park, past the fountain if you’re coming from the city end (and past the skate park if you’re coming from the other!). As far as parking goes, there are a few car park options, although I’m lucky enough to live near enough to run there.

We are fortunate in that we have a few courses to run, in order to accommodate recent weather and some improvements being made to the park’s tennis courts.

I’m going to describe the ‘usual’ and the current, which is scheduled to be used until March 2012.

Announcements are held within the bandstand area before the runners make their way to the start line, near the children’s playground.

From there, there’s a slight downhill through the trees with the football fields on the left. At the bottom the path turns left to follow the football fields along the narrow end of the park. Just before the skate park the course turns left again, up the (slight) hill and through the trees, on the way back to the bandstand. At this point you always get a great view of the hundreds of runners streaming around Eaton Park.

Run past the boating lake and take the second path on the right, with the lake on your right. It’s a sharp left at the end of that path which goes around the back of the park, through the trees and past the tennis courts. After that it’s straight past the bowling greens before another left past the bandstand.

Two more laps of that and at the end of the third lap, it’s a left to the home straight, the finish funnel and a last sprint for the last hundred metres!

The current course starts a little bit further back and consists of one lap straight past the boating lake to the bowling greens, and two which include a loop around the boating lake itself.

It really is a beautiful way to start a Saturday, and I feel lucky to have completed close to sixty parkruns there.

Tales of a lowly event director

When you're still tucking into your porridge, deciding which are your fastest socks, slathering yourself in muscle rub and visuallising that shiny new PB I'm already in the park trying to separate the cones which all seem to be busy mating in the back of my car and untangling the funnel rope (I'm sure we coiled that up carefully last weekend!?!)

I'm the event director of the beautiful Bradford parkrun which is held in Lister Park.

I'm also living proof that anyone can run, once I got over the thought of car drivers so transfixed by the size of my spandex covered backside jiggling about I actually found I enjoyed it!

I find its the only time I can mentally 'relax' as I shut out the world and all worries and just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without tripping over my own feet.

The first ten minutes or so are hard, I turn an amazing and rarely seen shade of puce; my eyeballs literally feel like they are rattling in their sockets and I puff and pant like a sexually frustrated hippo, but after a while I find a breathing rhythm, the muscles loosen and I relax into a pace.

I'll always be slow which used to bother me but it doesn't so much now, I'm usually at the back of most races but I still do them. I would probably never have considered entering races at all if it wasn't for the support of my amazing team mates in Eccleshill Road Runners; I always get the feeling that we're all in it together, no matter how spread out we all are amongst the mud splattered participants.

I also used to avoid hills if at all possible which isn't easy in Bradford! If a hill did manage to creep up on me I put my head down and refused to acknowledge its existance! Its a well known fact that if you can't see the hill, it can't see you and therefore it doesn't exist, but joining the running club which seems to gravitate towards every hill in Bradford and run up and down it several times just in case you didn't suffer enough the first time has forced me to change my habits. I also learned a valuable lesson.... If Mick Hogan tells you it's flat - better pack your crampons!

So look out for me at Bradford parkrun or at the Yorkshire vets races, I'll be the one at the back!

... Linda xx

New Contributor: Suze Rodger

Name: Suzanne Rodger
Home parkrun: Norwich
Date of first parkrun: 07/08/2010 (inaugural)
Total Number of parkruns: 59
Number of other parkrun locations run: 0

Number of times volunteered: 4

My name’s Suze, and I am one of those people. The ones who only talk about running, and when the conversation isn’t about running, I’ll try to steer it back to running. Well, not all of the time, but maybe more than some people like!

I wasn’t very sporty when I was younger, although I did have a bike and didn’t have a problem doing PE (even with brown gym knickers to wear with a netball skirt!)

While I was studying at university I walked everywhere, probably around 6 miles a day and usually pretty quickly as I was either late or rushing to get to one of my two jobs or classes.

Once I’d graduated though, I walked less and less. My new boyfriend had a car which came in handy to cut down on the rushing in the morning.

Four years later, and I realised that not only did none of my old clothes fit, none of the new ones did either. Drastic action had to be taken. This involved going to Slimming World, where I bought a couple of cookbooks, and joining a beginner’s running club.

I’d like to say that I carried on with the running club and managed to run the whole couch to 5k programme. Unfortunately, I didn’t, but I carried on running alone whenever I could. A job working away from home meant resorting to the gym (essential when you eat out every night) but less running.

When I found a job closer to home, I took up running again, right at the start. I found it a real struggle and it was difficult to see any real improvements. In June 2009 I got a nike+ for my birthday, so I could track the basics. Later that year, a few of us from work began running together as I was still finding it hard to run more than a mile without needing to walk.

Slowly, milestones began to be ticked off. I could run 5k without stopping. I could run and ‘talk’ at the same time (jn very short sentences!). Near the end of 2010, parkrun started in Norwich and my friend, who lives in the North, recommended that we go. That first parkrun my time was 32:20.

Nearly 60 later, I have a PB of 25:28 and regularly achieve sub 26 minutes, something I thought I’d never do. On top of that, last year I did 3 half marathons and a 10k race. This year I’m doing the National Lottery Olympic Park Run (no relation), London Marathon, Edinburgh half marathon, Great North Run and Royal Parks half marathon.

Not only that, but looking back at my nike+ stats, I ran more kilometers in January of this year than I did in the whole of 2009.

If you’d told the 5 stone heavier me that not only would I be running five or six times a week in training for races, but I’d enjoy it to the point where I miss it when I don’t run for more than 24 hours, I would have laughed.

I run because I love pushing myself and achieving goals I never thought possible. I run because it clears my head and boosts my energy levels. I may also run so I can have a biscuit without feeling guilty or panicky.

I’ve also found that the community of runners is brilliant. In parkrun especially, the fact that there are thousands of people all over the world pushing for the same goal – to complete a 5k – is amazing. No matter how fast or slow we are, we all share this common focus and it is that that binds us together.