ashgrove Parkrun review
GETTING THERE
Ashgrove Parkrun starts at the eastern corner of the Ashgrove Sportsgrounds near the Ashgrove Bowles Club and the Valley District Cricket Club and GPS Rugby Club. It's kind of a tricky route off Waterworks Road but fortunately my faithful GPS got me there in good time. The directions on the Ashgrove Parkrun page are very descriptive but I must say that if I didn't have a GPS, I would have found it a bit tricky finding this place as I am unfamiliar with the area.
PARKING
There is ample parking at the facility and because I arrived a tad early, I found a park quite close to the start.
TOILETS
The rugby/cricket club house must have toilet facilities but they were a bit difficult to find and I didn't really need them so I gave up looking. The building looked like a typical rugby club and I am sure the toilets would have reflected that state of cleanliness but I am afraid I would really be guessing.
THE COURSE
Driving to the start I saw a few people running from the surrounding suburbs to the venue which was a lovely sign of community spirit and engagement. But oh my goodness, I felt like I was back in high school running the inter house cross country race. It was very cold that day and the Run Director welcomed everyone and had a bit to say. I decided to find some shelter from the wind behind a few other runners (sorry guys).
We started on the oval and proceeded to run around all the ovals on the grass which was quite damp. The course then joined a concrete path and ran out to behind Ashgrove State school before turning back along the same path, this time continuing along the concrete path to another turnaround point.
The path has a number of plaques embedded in the concrete but I didn't stop to have a look at them. Obviously there is some history there or some businesses have donated money to the facility. There are trees along almost the entire route which meant that I had to step over a few fallen branches but it added to the quaint feel of the area. The good news was that there were no other members of the public on the path at that time which meant that we were able to have a clear path but because there were two turnaround points, there were oncoming runners along almost the entire route.
I ran past one point three times during the race so I found the course a bit repetitive but the treed route was pretty which made up for the repeats. As I said previously, running on the ovals was reminiscent of high school and it clearly has an impact on the speed of the course which a found a bit slow.
VOLUNTEERS
Ashgrove's volunteers were friendly and were placed at every turnaround point making it very easy to find one's way along the course. The Run Director asked people to volunteer according to the script and it looked like he was struggling to get people to help. This was confirmed when I looked on the Facebook page. There were pacers that day and it looked like they kept to the appointed times. I ran ahead of my guy so it seemed to work well.
PHOTOS
The Parkrun website directs you to a Flickr page but this must be outdated as there is only one picture in the archive which is a generic picture of someone's legs. I did a Facebook search and found the Ashgrove Facebook page but I wasn't able to find the pictures from the week I ran which was a pity. They may not have loaded pictures that week even though I saw a few photographers along the route.
THE ALL IMPORTANT COFFEE AFTERWARDS
I would have thought that Ashgrove would have had many local coffee shops. The Ashgrove Parkrun home page recommends two businesses; one in Ashgrove and one in The Gap which seems a long way away. There was no coffee van on site and the rugby and bowls clubs were closed. There were just over a hundred people running that week which would indicate that it wouldn't really be profitable for a van to park there for after the race.
OVERALL
I did feel like I was back at a school cross country event because of the ovals so the Gary rating for this event is an average 7/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment