As we have 75 parkrun locations in New Zealand currently, then travelling to do a different course is always a fun thing to do, especially when you do it with friends.
Yes, we currently have 75 locations, and it is still growing. I know of about 12 others that are in the 'potential' file, it is awesome to see something so simple and easy get developed and made available to so many.
I was just going to do a local one today but got talked into joining a group driving about 90 mins away. By the end of the day, I am so glad that I did, I had a great day out with friends, lots of laughing and a great time. Plus, the fun of standing in the freezing cold 2c early morning waiting for the sun to rise high enough to warm us up.
The course had a gentle undulating to it, which was a bugger as you were climbing a gentle incline for the whole of the last 1km which is hard when you have pushed yourself. It made for a great 5km time and I felt great afterwards.
Breakfast at the local cafe was interesting, from the deconstructed French Toast to the glasses used for the drinks.
My young friend thought my 'tiki' glass was cool and interesting, but then so did I too. And the sophistication of adding sugar to the rim of my Fruit Breeze, which was just fruit syrup and sparkling water was a cool touch (if a little sticky)
My deconstructed breakfast made eating it an adventure as the flavours were not blended, you added them together as you ate them.
The green is pistachio, not wasabi! Someone at the table did have a moment of horror when they thought I was putting hot stuff on my toast!
Another craze of parkrun, if you want to get into it, is to complete challenges. Yes, we are crazy people who will chase event numbers, letters of the alphabet and other aspects of completing a parkrun on a specific date, or at a location with the name starting with a letter that we need.
One such challenge is the 'match challenge' this involves attending an event whose event number matches your event number. So, if you are completing your 87 event and the parkrun is holding their 87th event, then you have a match. I have been looking into this challenge for a few weeks now and with the limited number of locations we have in NZ and the travel that would be involved I always presumed that this one would happen either by sheer coincidence or maybe in a year to two when I could get all the stars aligned.
As mentioned, I was not planning on this roadie and had planned to go somewhere else, so it was only as they were doing the event briefing at the start in the freezing cold and mentioned the event number that I quickly checked to confirm that I was indeed completing my event of the same number 😀
One Match Challenge ticked off 👌
Now to focus on working towards other challenges, although the event today did tick several aspects of several challenges but still got work to do to achieve others, plus the joy of travel to attend a location with the requirement I need. parkrun is free they say, until you start looking at challenges and then it becomes expensive to travel around the country/world chasing challenges 😎
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