Last minute plan to head somewhere exotic for parkrun last Saturday with Dunfermline narrowly winning out over Ayr. Friday night selection criteria was for a parkrun we’d:
a. Not done before; and
b. Could get to without getting up stupidly early.
So we set off at 7-45 arriving at Pittencrieff Park shortly before 9am giving us the unusual (we’re never early) luxury of some sightseeing and route scouting in advance of the run. The park is full of plenty interesting things to see and was busy even at that early hour, not only with marshals setting out the course but with new year resolutioners arriving en mass for their military fitness class. This did give us a bit of a scare as we wrongly assumed that a mass warm up was perhaps part of the Dunfermline experience.
Trying not to stray too far from the start line we were glad to see that the course had an excellent looking cafe very close to the finish. What was immediately apparent however was that the hills were likely to rival Tollcross for severity, regularity and incline.
We headed, as we do on first time visits to make sure Jack doesn’t get lost, to the first timers briefing muster point and were given a warm welcome and a brief summary of the route. 3 laps of approximately 1 mile each and the promise of ‘the big hill’.
As usual I was far too close to The Boy for comfort in the first 100 metres (either he’s a slow starter or I’m an over-enthusistic starter) but by around the 400m mark he’d opened a gap with another runner which grew and grew with each twist and turn thereon. I tucked into a pack of 3 as we descended the hill to the bottom of the park giving a chance to open the legs in the opening 1km. The route then loops around with a steep slope (aka ‘the big hill’) of approximately 150m before flattening out again and running around some of the park’s main attractions.
Twisting over the next 300 metres you loop round and under a bridge with a short ascent before starting the next lap (a nicely positioned sign warns you to turn to the right on lap 3 for the finish – duly noted as I did not want to be running any reps on ‘the big hill’).
The next two laps saw me settle into a regular pace and work hard on the flat and downhill allowing for a small recovery on the uphill and I was pleased to finish in 20minutes dead in 4th position. I’ve tended to find that a first visit never results in a personally fast time as I like to suss out the route. The Boy got faster and faster crossing the line 1st in a good time considering he was ‘going to take it easy’.
Nice to talk to local runners at the end and hear about @13thrunner who has started her own blog to record her first steps into the world of running. Well done on your first parkrun.
Thanks as always to marshals who did a great job of encouraging everyone with cowbells and hand clappers. Dunfermline seems to be an incredibly inclusive parkrun and the marshals gave every single runner and walker strong vocal encouragement. The post run scone in the cafe did not disappoint before we hit the car home. The upside of the long commute to this one was that it gave us plenty time to plan out many more daft challenges for 2017. Watch this space…
I think we’d both agree that Dunfermline was definitely worth a visit and actually much closer to Glasgow than either of us predicted (well not The Boy who described where he was to his wife on the phone as ‘I’m not sure where I am, oh hang on yes I am, I’m in outside Glasgow’).
therunbetweeners 