Parkrun #25: Chopwell Wood

Tell me... can you feel the milestone? Ohhhh yes. TWENTY-FIVE! T-shirt incoming! 😁

Aaaanyway... back to the run. First time at Chopwell Wood and it was HARD. A few months back, I watched a YouTube video of some guy doing this course and... well, it didn't look too hard. He talked through the fact there were uphill sections, but in all honesty, they looked pretty easy. In hindsight, maybe it was just that they were easy for him and the camera wasn't showing the true extent of the hills. (He got a time of 23:50, btw. 😲) Whatever, it was definitely hard for me. Possibly the hardest one I've done, in fact.

The walk to the start from the car park (seen above) was pretty typical of the trails we'd run: mostly gravel and small stones bedded nicely into mud. Nothing too squelchy, so mostly a decent running surface, though there were a few sections with larger, more rubble-like stones, but mostly smooth ones.

Prior to turning up, I'd been a bit sad that I didn't have anyone to share the 25 run milestone with. I'd genuinely been looking forward to having my name called out at the start, but couldn't bring myself to tell the run director of my milestone myself. It just felt a bit too "look at me!", especially for just 25 runs. In the end I got my applause anyway; one guy was announced as hitting his 50 run milestone and the race director then asked whether anyone else had a milestone, so I happily piped up. At the time, it still felt a little pathetic, but looking back, it's a moment I'll cherish. I'm truly one of the parkrun clan now. 😊

When the run itself got going, I made sure I was fairly close to the front of the small pack (54 runners), what with my growing confidence. Sure, some people immediately shot past me, but my main concern was that two friends running side by side ahead of me were making me check my strides and a father and son to my right were blocking an overtake. As soon as the runnable path widened a bit, I was past and mindful of keeping a good pace. Not long later, I'd come to regret this. 🙄

Even though the first few hundred metres were on the flat, it wasn't long till my body began to complain. My lungs in particular just didn't seem to have woken up yet and I was really labouring. A few undulating bits later and we arrived at the bottom of the first proper hill. Even the fact that we'd had a trot downhill towards it hadn't prepared me for it. And by god it was tough! Not the steepest I've done by any means, but it felt long! People really started going past me now as I took baby steps.

By the time we got to the top, some balding fella had just come past and I fixated on him for a bit as we crested and then began heading back downhill. I barely remember the course itself at this point, but he was my pacesetter for the rest of the first half. The course is shaped a bit like a figure of eight, with one decent hill on each loop, so at least I had a rough estimate of when halfway arrived.

Chopwell Wood parkrun, mapped out on onthegomap, with kilometre markers

By the time we hit the halfway mark, however, I swear my pacesetter kicked. At least, he left me for dead. 😂 More people overtook me, including a teenager in white top who seemed to be toying with the idea of running a 5k, intermittently walking, looking over his shoulder, and then blazing off again. For now, I was just focused on keeping going.

The (fairly level) run to the next corner seemed to take forever and when it arrived, the course headed downhill considerably. I tried to let the hill take me, increasing my pace to reduce the gap to those who'd just overtaken or pulled away from me, without taxing my legs or lungs — and it worked to an extent. But the main thing that filled my mind was how every stride downhill was just adding to the size of the hill I'd have to climb to get back to the finish.

At the bottom of the hill, we turned a corner to the left and started going uphill. Mercifully, it was a very gentle uphill, which was eminently manageable. If the track did the whole ascent at that rate, I'd be overjoyed. Of course, I wasn't overjoyed. On turning another corner (and now heading NW on the map above), things got steeper. I was back to baby steps and huffing and heaving my way up the hill, very slowly.

Much to my amazement, the hill was over relatively quickly. Coming over a crest, I could see the junction ahead where the loop re-joined the outbound path. My brain was really struggling to get around this. Given how far and how steeply we'd descended, I felt like I'd just broken the laws of physics by returning to the top of the hill without actually climbing as much as I'd descended. 🤔 Regardless, I was more than happy for it to be this way around! Maybe my lungs and legs had finally woken up.

Once back on the flat-ish disused railway line to the finish, I wished I knew the course better. There was just enough of a bend in the path that I couldn't tell how far I was from the finish funnel. Had I known, I would've been better able to judge when to up the pace — and I would've done so earlier. In the end, boy-in-the-white-top absolutely shot past me again (we'd been exchanging positions many times) just as the funnel came into sight. I kicked too, but couldn't match his pace. And it was only because he eased off before the line that I got the same time as him.

My finish time was 27:21, which given that I felt it was harder than Windy Nook, is pretty pleasing (Windy Nook was slower). Also pleasing is the fact I've now notched up 3 new parkruns this year, out of the 5 I'm aiming for overall. My NENDY (nearest event not done yet) is getting quite distant, though; it'll be a good half hour's drive for each new event from now. And, of course, one final pleasing thing is the fact I've finally got over the milestone line. It feels like it's been a long time coming, but the t-shirt's ordered and I'll be wearing purple at the next parkrun. 😁  Onwards and upwards!