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The Colton Hurter 5K

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No, not that Colton Herta , but yes, he is the reason I named the run that. Herta in his IndyCar days. Photo blatantly pilfered from the BBC Sport pages. So, last weekend saw the family visiting my father-in-law in Leeds and we ended up staying overnight in Colton, on the eastern side of the city. The weather was glorious — maybe a little too glorious — and I knew that Temple Newsam was within reach of our hotel, so a route was planned for the Sunday morning: The route, as planned on onthegomap.com, which is still my favourite route mapping tool. As it turned out, while it was only 16C at the time I ran, when the sun was on you, it was sweltering. In the end, I only just managed the 5K before the heat and the jarring nature of the run, with hard, rutted paths, took its toll on my left knee. While I did hit 5K, I cut the run short by about 250m to give my knee a break and to cool down a bit by walking the last bit back to the hotel. The Avenue at Temple Newsam, heading downhi...
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Fantasy parkruns: the revival

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It's only just struck me that I never posted about any of the other fantasy parkrun courses I'd tried designing. Let's make amends for that. By now, I've actually run and posted about two such courses: Weetslade Country Park near Gosforth Park Watergate Forest Park near Team Valley ...but where else did I have in mind? Plessey Woods Country Park near Bedlington offers more woodland, pasture and riverside running opportunities: Plessey Woods fantasy parkrun route; 3 laps of the main loop Starting near the visitor centre, it heads downhill through the open grassy area towards the footbridge over Pegwhistle Burn before doing three undulating laps up to and through the meadow, down to the River Blyth and back alongside Pegwhistle Burn to the start of the loop. After the 3rd tour, it's back up the hill to where you started. To be honest, this would probably be a fairly brutal parkrun, with lots of up and down, some of it even up steps, if I remember rightly. But the s...
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Watergate Forest Park 5K

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Yonks back, when I was still all keen, I started making up 'fantasy' parkrun courses based on places I'd seen on Google Maps or onthegomap.com that looked suitable for a 5K run. This weekend, I finally made it to one of the green bits I'd spotted on the map: Watergate Forest Park. The lake at Watergate Forest Park is probably its main feature but I barely saw it While I'd already mapped out a 5K-ish route a while back, there was also a 5K mapped out on AllTrails too and it turns out that even on the free tier, you get to see your location on the route as you run. Bonus! Turns out it was only about 2 minutes' drive from home too. Anyway, how was the course? Pretty good, actually. The paths are mostly fine-to-medium grade gravel and fairly wide, with a little bit of regular forest floor type of trail too. On the route I took (I veered from the AllTrails route a little), the gradients were also pretty good: a few hundred metres of gentle undulation followed by abo...
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Whittle Dene at last!

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What better way to wind down after working half of Saturday than to head out for a run in a new location, and one that I've meaning to visit for years? Muchas gracias to The Wife for giving me the time and space.  So, Whittle Dene it was. A few years back, I was googling for good places to see bluebells in Spring and this was one of the top recommended places. It's a bit late now to see bluebells in their prime, but there were still a few around today in among the wild garlic. There were moments on this run, which started across the river at Prudhoe Riverside Park, that were properly beautiful and the discovery of the little huts near Whittle Mill  partway in was delightful, but the few photos I took were rubbish, sadly. I'll just have to go back someday and take better ones.  There's another reason why I want to go back too: I didn't do the full route I'd planned to run. I simply didn't have the time. I came close, but by the time I turned back ...
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A glorious 7.5K loop from Old Hartley

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Today was unbelievably good weather for a run. Sunshine, blue skies with fluffy white clouds, and just 10°C. Given the choice between the Tyne valley and a return to the Seaton Sluice area, the latter won out for the sake of being marginally quicker to get to. Looking south along the clifftops to the lighthouse on St Mary's Island, Whitley Bay This time, we'd head south from Old Hartley clifftops (the southern end of Seaton Sluice, basically) towards St Mary's Island and Whitley Bay before coming inland past the caravan site and the golf course to reach the waggonways. From there, another 90° right-hander to head back northwards along said waggonway to Holywell Dene and then down into and through the dene and up again towards the Delaval Arms and down the bank back to the clifftops. A nice mix of seaside running, fields, railway lines, a tree-filled valley and riverside run. I really was blessed to grow up in this area; it's as delightful now for running as it was for g...
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Parkrun #67: Fell Foot, run 1

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Yep, an actual parkrun. And a new location, to boot. On holiday, no less. Wonders may never cease. It's too much of a cliché to have your photo taken next to the venue sign, right? So I went meta instead and took a photo of someone having their photo taken. In the days leading up to today, the weather has been glorious. Today, we got Lake District weather, albeit with only cloud and not rain. Nevertheless, it was lovely to be out in a fresh, green landscape and on a course that was new to me. In terms of challenge, it felt similar to Morpeth. Two laps and with a brief but notable climb. Here, however, you only had to do that climb once rather than the three times you get in Morpeth. Mostly running on grass, and with a decent dew, meant my feet got a bit soaked even before we'd started. The trail shoes were a bit unnecessary, but I wasn't sure what to expect . 🤷 Given this was my first timed event in 6 months, I really wasn't expecti...
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Seaton Sluice 5K

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Another weekend, another non-parkrun 5K-ish. Google Fit reckoned it was just over 5K, and running buddy's watch thought the same. Onthegomap.com strongly disagreed. Anyway, this time, I completely forgot to get any photographic evidence, so here's a map of the route instead:  Being in my spiritual home of Seaton Sluice, I was absolutely in my element. Starting at the harbour by the Waterford Arms, heading under the road bridge and past the old bottleworks site (and that of the old bridge that I never knew), we headed up the dene to the far end of the village. From there, uphill to the Delaval Arms and downhill again to the clifftops before following the coast back to the Kings Arms and finishing with a lap of Rocky Island. The whole thing was around sunset for once, which was nice too. Unfortunately, I'm writing this at least a week after the event, so my memories of how I felt on the run are a little hazy. But I think both my hip and knee were fine this time, w...
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