My first time being a true parkrun tourist. And this week, I did something new – I trained during the week!
Parkrun 10: Forster Parkrun
Location: Forster NSW
Position: 70
Time: 32:33
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at the Parkrun map and working out places close enough to get to easily enough after work so that I wasn’t checking in too late, but far enough to make a trip out of it. In Australia, that can be harder than you think, given the vast distances between towns.
I knew I didn’t want to hang around the Hunter Valley, but my options are limited to two hours drive from where I work. Heading south, it’s Sydney and the Central Coast; west, it’s the Upper Hunter; and to the north, it’s the Mid Coast of NSW. Given I spend a lot of time in Sydney for work as it is, and west is quite limited in options, I decided to plan for North.
I haven’t been to Forster in nearly 40 years, since I was a young kid. For some reason, this weekend was very busy. To illustrate, this week, there were 144 finishers. This time last year, there were 93. In fairness, the number of finishers jumps around a lot, far more than most other parkruns, I’d imagine.
The course straddles the beach and is a three-lap course that starts with a brutal climb, although, mercifully, not so much on the first lap as the course deviates down to the beach path pretty quickly. I’m finding myself getting used to lapped courses and even enjoying them – it breaks up the 5k in a way that makes the journey easy to compartmentalise mentally.
An undulating course for the distance of each lap (with the aforementioned brutal climb at the beginning) that ebbs and flows as you run along, today was about just enjoying the journey. Given I’d run more through this week than any other week this year so far, I knew my legs didn’t have it in them. More so, given the climbing.
As I came into the finishing chute, I felt a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. I felt my time should have been quicker, but I need to be a bit easy on myself. I sat down on the grass, collected myself, and then when I got up, felt a twinge on the inside of my left knee. The pain was as sudden as it was unexpected. As I walked back to the hotel, the pain was noticeable on any inclines, less so on downhills – something to watch for the next few days.
Unfortunately, due to work commitments this weekend, I’m not able to hang around and make a weekend of it, so I go back to the hotel and rest for a bit before having a shower and packing the car. I grab brunch in town as a final splurge and then drive the two hours back home.
But I’ve got the bug. I’m already thinking about my next excursion and how to make a full weekend out of it. And given that this was parkrun number 37 in total, doing something special for parkrun 50 is at the front of my mind.