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NOTE
Everything below here refers to the 2010 Longest parkrun - see above for details of this year's event
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The inaugural Longest parkrun took place on Sunday 27th 2010.
The 2010 Route & Timetable can be found on the 2010 Route Page.
Photos
Paul's Review from 1st July Newsletter
It appears that most of the great sporting events started life as someone's crazy idea. Just look at the world's greatest ultra marathon – The Comrades Marathon – as an example.
This gruelling 56 mile race between Pietermaritzburg and Durban in South Africa was started by Vic Clapham who was born in London on 16 November 1886 and emigrated as a youth to the Cape, with his parents.
With the outbreak of the Great War 1914, Vic Clapham signed up with the Infantry, and fought and marched 1700 miles of the eastern savannahs of Africa in pursuit of Glen Paul Von Lettow-Vorbecks askari battalions.
The pain, agonies, death and hardships of his comrades which he witnessed during those awful days left a lasting impression on him. Thus when peace was declared in 1918, Clapham approached the authorities with the idea of celebrating the fallen by running a 56 mile race between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. His appeals were not well received by the authorities. Clapham persisted maintaining that if a sedentary living person could be taken off the street given a rifle and 60lb pack and marched all over Africa then surely a fit and able athlete could complete the distance.
His enquiry led him to the doors of the League of Comrades of the Great War a corpus of ex-soldiers who had formed an association to foster the interests of their living companions who had survived the War. So it was that the great Comrades Marathon was born. The first Comrades Marathon took place on 24th May 1921, starting outside the City Hall in Pietermaritzburg with 34 runners and has continued since then every year with the direction alternating each year between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, the so called up & down runs.
It's a great story but what's the relevance of this to parkrun I hear you ask? Well, last weekend some nutter decided it might be fun to see if anyone could run 8 successive parkruns in a day. That's nearly the marathon distance so assuming one is fit then this is a mere bagatelle. This event was designed to coincide with the longest day of the year but not the hottest as it turned out. The idea was to start at Bushy, take in the 6 closest and easiest to reach local parkruns and finish at Bushy. The relevance is that I believe that this event may just become an annual event and achieve great popularity in the future.
A contingent of 28 parkrunners, including 2 from the first ever parkrun, assembled at Bushy where we re-traced the steps taken at the first event. We started on the road opposite the cafe at the original start line and running the course in the reverse direction as was the case 6 years ago and finishing alongside the stream. We all timed ourselves.
A poll at the start indicated that there were about 4 individuals who were going to attempt the full distance. Amongst them, a fairly new runner and parkrunner, Zoe Gavars who has achieved 8 PB's in the last 8 parkruns she has taken part in. If she achieved this goal then this would be the furthest she had ever run in one day. Richard McChesney, an ultra marathoner with an impressive parkrun record of 47 events at 15 different venues, also indicated his aspiration to attempt the whole distance. I was resigned to one full parkrun and then see what happens – these days I only run once a week and I had successfully completed Eastleigh parkrun the day before – as were many of the others.
The first four events, Bushy, Kingston, and Richmond, Wimbledon flashed by as we scurried to complete the events and keep to the schedule. A number of the group managed to run all four of these events. We were fortunate to have key volunteers from each of these events with us and so Ray took charge at Bushy, Wiebke at Kingston, Karen Weir at Richmond. Arriving at Wimbledon we found 100 Clubber and local volunteer Colin Harris, waiting for us and had been around the course and pre-marked it for us. Colin assumed control and offered a pre event briefing and led the first lap before leaving it to Peter Weir to complete the distance.
We took a welcome break after Wimbledon before making our way to Crystal Palace parkrun. Traffic was a killer causing a delay in the schedule and forcing us to consider just the one lap of CP parkrun (nothing to do with the hills!). Then it was a quick drive to Roundshaw Downs parkrun where some of us made a single lap of the course. Clearly the heat and the distance had taken its toll as the group now numbered 8. Don't be fooled by the way we all look so energetic in these photos, this was all production stuff.
While many of you were watching England get thumped by Germany, the 8 remaining parkrunners made it around one lap of Banstead Wood parkrun. Relief set in as we made our way back to Bushy where we had gathered some 9 hours earlier for the final leg of the longest parkrun. The group grew a couple of numbers at this stage as the finish was in sight.
The day consisted of a bit of running and loads of socialising. The main organiser, the nutter from earlier, (Chris Wright of Crispy Corner fame) could not take part in the running but was onsite all day keeping us on time, taking all these wonderful photos and adding colour to the day with his wit and charm. Danny managed to spend a great deal of the day on London Transport while David timed the pizza and beer session to perfection. My dogs are still resting after trying to run the full distance and the rest of us were just happy to be a part of the inaugural Longest parkrun. The winners of the day were undoubtedly Zoe who managed 5 full and 3 half courses followed closely by her dad Dzintars (pronounce Zini) and Joanne Sinton-Hewitt. Click here for a view of all the photos. Apparently the Longest parkrun committee has now been established and is already planning the next event.
Apologies to those of you who live outside the South of England - maybe next year we'll have several Longest parkruns around the country.