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Tring parkrun – location 59 for parkrun #97

This morning’s visit was to Tring parkrun, the most westerly parkrun in the East of England region. It was hot and it was hilly, but beautiful too.

A few visitors to Tring
The RD, Anna, gives her briefing
And they’re off!

The route is fairly steeply downhill, then a gentle incline up the grassy valley, then a steep wooded zigzag up onto the ridge, along the woodland ridge, then downhill to the bottom of the valley, gently back up the valley, a steep “Heartbreak Hill” then along an avenue of trees to the finish – delightful.

The avenue of trees, scene of a few sprint finishes after the challenge of Heartbreak Hill

The climb up to the ridge is quite challenging for a Suffolk lad, but the run down with a decent gradient and reasonable footing was thrilling, with my Garmin recording my peak speed at below 3mins/km and me grabbing a Strava segment at an average of 3:30/km, which is astonishing for me – definitely the fastest I’ve ever run.

The picture is taken from the ridge route which forms the middle kilometre or so, and is the first time in 97 parkruns that I’ve stopped on the way round to take a photo. The finish is on the other side of the valley at the right-hand end of the avenue of trees in the centre of the picture.
This is the only parkrun I’ve done which has cow marshalls, to try to keep the cattle out of the way of the runners or to direct runners around the cattle if that fails. In practice, I saw a few at the start but after that it was only cowpats that presented a hazard.
A view of the finish line

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