2016 Championship - Last race - Race 8 - Heaton Park Parkrun - The Pacing Race
Given the North Manchester location, it wouldn’t be right to have anything other than a grey drizzly morning for the final Championship race in our NWFPAC league and, whilst the other park runners had their own Halloween theme, the NWFPAC tribe had their own theme to attend to, naked running…. well, not quite naked, but running without a watch or other timing device.
One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about NWFPAC is the different types of running it’s introduced me to and the watch-less running twist was a great way to level the pack. Looking forward to next year’s variations – did someone say barefoot?
The Heaton Park Run was new to a lot of the NWFPAC runners and Carl Acton, Tim Shaw and I were cursing what started to feel like overly ambitious estimate times as a skeleton / witch relayed ghoulish details of ‘Angina Hill’.
The mist hanging over the parkland provided a suitable backdrop as variety of zombies, witches and vampires set off in front of the old hall before taking the hairiest of left hairpins and gathering pace down a long opening descent. As park-runs starts go it sure beats Lyme Park for easing you in (speaking of Lyme Park, Carl Acton’s report included plenty of detail about keeping ahead of me so it was nice to be able to return the favour in advance of writing this – although I would be the first to admit Carl seems to choose his times and when he chooses a fast one it leaves me for dust).
At about 2k we got a taste of ‘Angina Hill’ before bearing left and through some woodland and looping a lake. I’d say most of the first 3.5k was pretty pleasant, other than the nagging sense that you’d have to pay for it when you hit Angina Hill for real.
I was feeling pretty comfortable as we headed up it, I think having the Manchester half in the legs from the fortnight before meant the endurance levels were pretty good.
A runner beside me announced ‘16 flat’ as we hit the 4k mark so I knew I was on for around 20 minutes. My estimate had been 20:20 and I ended up splitting the difference at 20:09.
As the runners gathered after the race rumours of dubious music assisted pace marking crept out but Tim Shaw’s result was allowed to stand.
Was good to get to know some of the other NWFPAC members over a coffee after the run too. Roll on next year.
As usual, we failed to get everyone who was there together for a photo, but below are those of us who we did grab!
