Saturday was the very first Gloucester North parkrun. This is very definitely now my local, as it's within walking distance.

There are quite a few nearby parkruns now, which is quite exciting.  I've done Cheltenham (including the inaugural one) and the Forest of Dean, but not Newent, Kingsway or Tewkesbury.  That may or may not change at some point, but it's certainly nice to have a choice!

Glos North is held at Plock Court, which is a big boring flat field - no prizes for scenery here.  It's also been known to turn into a large lake, but that's another matter...
One of my regularish running routes includes a lap of the whole thing, which clocks in at around 3km, so I'm quite used to running there.  The parkrun course is 3 laps of one half of the field.

I set off far too fast, and didn't realise until someone's fancy watch beeped at 1km and loudly announced a pace of 5:25. Oops.

By the third lap my cold-filled lungs were not happy with me, and I did have to stop a few times for some coughing.  But I ran sub 30, yay.  In fact, it was my fastest parkrun ever - but that's not saying much as it's taken me 5 years to do 13 of them (though there was a 2.5 year gap between #1 and #2, ahem).

Perhaps having one so close to home will persuade me to go more often!

tags: Gloucester running