I made it along to the second Finsbury parkrun this morning, having missed the first due to a trip to France. It takes just over an hour to my “traditional” parkrun location at Bushy Park, so, after an evening out in Camden, the 25 minute cycle to Finsbury Park was definitely a preferred option. It was a cool, crisp morning, quite sunny. The park was surprisingly busy for 9am on a Saturday, with other joggers, BMT clients, cyclists, and children in the playground. There were 38 people for race – as the series has just started, the numbers will probably grow, but it meant I got a top-10 finish today.
The course is two laps of the park, with a meander inwards to the top of the hill, from the northernmost point of the perimeter road, near the end of each loop. The meander starts with a short, sharp (1 in 8) climb up to the top, my km splits (3:51, 4:10, 3:51, 4:11, 4:07) suggest the hill, in the 2nd and 5th kilometres, seemed to take around 15 seconds out of my time each time it was visited. There was another, more gradual hill in the first and fourth km. I finished 7th, in 20:11, but didn’t push hard, so should be able to beat that comfortably in the future. I’m going to try and make it to as many of these ones as possible, in the next few months, unless an even more local one starts!
