Mind the puddles!

Some Northern parkrun tourism.

07/02/26 : Woodhouse Moor 

Another one for me and my eldest, but it was only tourism for one of us - because the other one lived there at the time. Yup, Woodhouse Moor is in the mighty Leeds, making this the most Northerly parkrun either of us have ever done - a mere 283km away (amusingly, my next most Northern event is Letchworth). Woodhouse Moor is right in the middle of student accommodation land and so it is also the most populous parkrun either of us have ever done - there were people EVERYWHERE!

And because my eldest was in her house and I was in a hotel, we had to arrange a place to meet, which could have been tricky. But fortunately my sartorial elegance always makes me easy to spot - I just stood in the middle of the park and waited! But it was a chilly wait because Leeds in February is not tropical - however, in a change from the last few days up there, it was at least dry (in the air, if not on the ground).

The course starts in the middle of the park and then heads out to a loop round the park which you do three times on (in theory) solid (tarmac-like) paths with some areas of gradient, but the loop only has 15m difference in elevation between the top and bottom points, so it's not too bad (but, of course, the finish is on an uphill stretch - it seems to be an unofficial parkrun rule). So, this should be a reasonably speedy course, right?!? Well...

In theory, yes - but if you've been paying attention, I've already given you a couple of hints as to why that might not be the case. Despite it being a chilly February morning in Leeds, there were 803 finishers this week and, whilst the path is a decent enough width, it's not quite wide enough for that number of people. So there are quite a few areas where you have to slow down, particularly at the start where you do a close to hairpin turn - they don't have to do that in the Olympics I tell you. 

Another thing you don't have in the Olympics is ocean sized (and depth) puddles - some of those babies were impressive. And when faced with such things, it appears you have two choices - and the option you select tells us a lot about you. If you care about your parkrun time (and don't care about looking like an absolute twat) you plough through the centre of the puddle and make sure you splash as many people as you can (and believe me, this was a lot of people). The depth of some of these lakes was easily over the top of my trainers, so this was not the option I selected - I took the other, somewhat slower but equally treacherous option, which involved exploring the acres of mud that surrounded them. This was nicer than wading through the puddles, but not a lot nicer - it was super, super slippery!

All of which meant that getting to the end was a bit of a struggle, but it was certainly worth the wait because it's the most impressive end to an event I've seen - it's the funnel to end all funnels! I completed the course in 32:39 (an age-graded score of 48.13%), which was a relatively slow time for me and so, because of the huge number of people involved, this meant I finished in 593rd, which is the furthest I've finished down the field yet.

But it's really not about the numbers. It was a well organised event with everyone being very friendly - the puddles and the mud gave people plenty to talk about. My eldest heads back to Leeds next year for her final year and I'll certainly make an effort to do it a couple more times before she finishes - hopefully I'll get to see the course in some nicer weather to make getting around a bit easier.