Victoria Embankment

Post published:2nd May 2026
Reading time:4 mins read
Post category:2026 / Nottinghamshire / parkruns

A Deliberate Detour

Some parkruns are chosen for the scenery. Others are for the personal bests. Some — like Victoria Embankment in central Nottingham — for the simple reason that you fancy a day out and don’t want to go too far. That’s more or less the full explanation. I didn’t need another “V” — Vermuyden Way sorted that a few weeks ago — but I went anyway. That’s the beauty of parkrun tourism: the logic doesn’t always have to hold up.

There was, in fairness, a secondary reason: South Derbyshire Road Runners parkrun cup day. The sketch, for the uninitiated: you’re placed in a division of five, paired off against a fellow runner every few weeks, and you have to beat them on age-graded score. You pick your own course. Victoria Embankment is flat, fairly wide, and hence likely to be fast. So. Decision made.

Parking Advice, Disregarded

The parkrun team at Victoria Embankment advise you not to park on the embankment itself. I’m not entirely sure why — it’s public parking and it’s enormous. I use it for Forest matches. So I parked on the road. Right next to the start line, as it turned out. More on that in a moment.

Being my habitual self, I arrived a good half hour early. Plenty of time to find the crew, have a wander, and observe the important pre-run bicycle rotation traditions.

I also discovered — entirely unplanned — that fellow SDRR runners Helen, Kev, and Andy had also made the trip. We all run at wildly different speeds, so there was no question of running together. I did manage to gate-crash a photo with them at the end, though. That counts as club spirit.

The Course

Victoria Embankment delivered exactly what it promised: flat, fairly wide, and mercifully free of hills. The River Trent sits alongside, which is a pleasant backdrop when you’re not focusing entirely on your breathing. The width of the course meant the field spread out quickly, which is always welcome — fewer elbows, more oxygen. It’s also a fairly new event. This weekend was only their eighth event, so they are fairly new.

The course consists of two loops totalling just over 4km, with a 1km extension (under the footbridge) tacked onto the end. When running back along the riverside it was definitely quite wide.

The Running Bit

I set off at a pace that felt controlled and, crucially, turned out to actually be controlled. I crossed the line in 31:20 — my fastest of the year, and good enough for an age-graded score of 51.65%. Back above the 50% mark, which is where I like to be. Was it the flat course, the cup day motivation, or genuine improvement? I’m choosing not to examine that too closely. Maybe it was the weather.

Oh — the parking spot next to the start line. As everyone was assembling for the start there were a couple of non-runners with big backpacks that were dangerously close to the front of my car. So next time I’ll park a bit further along, or on the other side of the road.

Coffee, Cake, and Committed Parkrunners

Afterwards, I found the café by the course and settled in with a coffee and a slice of something appropriate. I ended up chatting with a couple of hardcore parkrunners from Newark. They’d run in every available country — and had the t-shirts to prove it. Good company for a debrief, and a reminder that however many venues you’ve ticked off, someone has always done more.