Bramhall Parkrun - 'Michael Page' NWFPAC 2020 Championship - Race #1

The first of February saw the 2020 inaugural championship race take place at Bramhall parkrun. Was the timing going to prove to be prophetic? We also were bearing witness to the return of Edwards vs Henderson; who would triumph in this great battle?

Bramhall is a new course for me, but I had done my due diligence and checked the course out on their internet page, that left me absolutely no clearer on the route whatsoever. It said it was a two lap figure of 8 course, funny figure of 8 to me. Less infinity loop and more hourglass with a weird loop sticking off the side. Anyway, being very much a middle of the herd runner I relied on just being able to follow the crowd. We had been advised to get close to the front at the start and I could see why, people were packed into the start area like the Northern Line trains at rush hour.

We set off, and boy it turned out to be hillier than I was expecting. I thought South Manchester parkruns were flattish, not so here, as Tim Shaw commented to me afterwards there was an annoyingly pretty much constant undulation. There was a downhill, normally my favourite part of a run, but this was a tad too steep for my comfort fearing running out of control straight into another runner, or worse, injuring my knees. And then there was the mud! If I had wanted to run through mud I would have signed up for cross country! Fortunately there was only one section of the course like this, albeit you had to run it twice.

All this said, the park is very beautiful, and I enjoyed the scenery (when I remembered to look up from the ground, that's a bad habit of mine). I do have my reservations though about having a random fountain right in the middle of one of the paths you run down, it was hidden very well from me on the first lap by the other runners and I saw it only at the last moment. I'm really not sure how that got through parkrun adjudication!

I was really feeling it by the end, feeling a little bit ill and that I was giving it everything I had. Massive thanks from me go to Alan Reynolds, who having already finished the run himself made the lovely gesture of cheering me on about 200 metres from the end, and then promptly cheered on his team mate Jack. Up to that point I hadn’t been aware that any NWFPAC’er was behind me, and all of a sudden feeling sick be damned, that glorious status was within my grasp and I wasn't about to let it go, namely not being the last finisher from our group. I think that's only ever happened once before, so I found the strength to pick up my pace. Sorry Jack, but there was no way I was letting you past. Thanks Alan for the heads up! As it transpired, Nigel Barrett was behind Jack, so for the first time ever, I had two of the group come in after me! Wonders will never cease. And another first, I actually made the team photo! Hooray.

We had a great turnout with 22 of us turning up. And then 12 retired for a lovely breakfast at the Stables Cafe. Slight consternation ensued as I received a message that the parkrun results site was down, so we thought we would have to wait until Monday for results – we’d only been out of the EU for 11 hours but it seemed we were already seeing its impact. Fortunately it turned out to be fake news and the results were actually delivered extremely promptly.

This event saw the first implementation of the new group 48 hour rule. Basically, to make it fair so that everyone knows who their competition are, you have to declare your attendance 48 hours prior to the race. This caused some controversy, as it means that three of our number have been disqualified for not declaring, specifically Gareth Hurfurt, Phil Warburton and Ash Richardson. However, stop press, over breakfast Gareth demanded a Steward’s Enquiry, claiming that he did actually declare in the required time. Controversial, how will this play out? Will this result in lots of lowered scores? I'm sure Dave will keep us posted.

As it transpired, in the great Edwards vs Henderson battle, Byron held Steven off with a 10 second margin coming in 3rd and 4th overall, but 1st and 2nd in our group with times of 17.39 and 17.49. We also saw two PB's in the group; very well done Rob Fairbanks and Alan Reynolds, 19.00 and 20.53 respectively, great efforts. I'm not going to list everyone else's times, as David will no doubt include the table for your perusal. So I will just say well done everyone! A great first race! And Jack, I'm sure you'll have the opportunity for revenge on me in a future race.