Do what John?
Northampton parkrun. Not the plan, but then again, plans rarely survive contact with reality, especially when reality involves ice.
Friday night discourse revolved around where to go for a parkrun. The snow and freezing conditions during the week meant many local ones in Derbyshire and Leicestershire were cancelled, including my home run at Conkers. So where to go? A few local ones seemed still to be on (on Friday night), but also the conditions a bit further south were better, with most parkruns seemingly OK. A suggestion was made that Brixworth might be good. So Brixworth it is then.
The weather had been doing its best impression of a freezer aisle all week, and so it also was on Saturday morning. I set off from home just after 7am with about 80 minutes of driving to do. I also needed to stop for fuel, and by the time I got on the motorway it was 7:20 and time was looking a bit tighter.
Going Off-Piste
The drive was uneventful, which is always a win when the roads could have been icy. When I was fifteen minutes from Brixworth, the phone rang: “It’s off.” said Sara (or words to that effect). “Northampton seems to be on”. So a bit of rerouting was required. Thankfully Northampton was 15 minutes further down the road that I was already on. So I just about had time to get there. Driving was fun though, with the sun being directly in my eyes for much of this bit.
I arrived at the course about 12 minutes before the start and immediately spotted the SDRR buddies. There was just about enough time to turn my bike around before going to the first-timer’s briefing. It was busy when I arrived — possibly because the University of Northampton parkrun was also off, and everyone had piled in here instead. I parked somewhere that may or may not have had a time limit. A gamble for later.
The Running Bit
Cold. That’s the headline. No snow down here, but frost and ice everywhere like nature’s glitter. Some extra marshalls were in place to stand in front of the impromptu skating rinks. The course is flat-ish: one big loop and one small loop, which sounds simple enough until you realise that “flat” is a relative term. Having done both now, it’s flatter than the University course. And flatter than Conkers. But it isn’t totally flat.
I ran it in a little over 33 minutes. Respectable, given the conditions and my ongoing battle with Newton’s laws.
The Location
The scenery? Functional rather than spectacular. It’s known as The Racecourse. It’s quite a big park. The fact that it’s surrounded by Victorian terraces might indicate it wasn’t ever a horse racing venue, but actually it was. It was closed in 1904, so maybe they’re Edwardian houses and they weren’t there when it was a racecourse.
Anyway, Dr Google says that the racecourse was problemmatic because it was unfenced and had public rights of way. That meant people could wander across the course during race meetings. In 1904 a horse careened into the crowd, resulting in serious injuries and fatalities. The course lost its permission to hold events. The result? It was redeveloped into the public park we see today.
Coffee and Consequences
Post-run, we headed to a local café that came highly recommended. The coffee was fine, the food options were also OK but the seating was basically a theoretical concept. Still, caffeine is caffeine, and it was warm inside, which counted for a lot.
I left around 10:30, partly because of the parking gamble and partly because I wasn’t feeling great. The drive home was mercifully uneventful apart from a 10 minute wait on the M6 while a crashed car was moved off the carriageway. Nothing is ever straightforward.
Wrapping Up
So that was Northampton parkrun: a frosty detour, a fast course, and a reminder that sometimes the best-laid plans end with you running somewhere entirely different. No sausage bun this time, but at least there was coffee. And honestly, that’ll do. Brixworth will most likely still be there later in the year.
