A walk around the parkrun

Last night I was interviewed by @epodcaster on Twitter Spaces to talk about fitness on the blockchain. The recording is linked on the tweet below. This was a fun half hour where I talked about my experience of @actifit and @exhaust on Hive. I tend to use the latter, but we have more than one option to encourage activity in the real world as well as on the blockchain.

It was mentioned in the discussion that I could include more visual material in my running posts. I do not tend to take many photos as that involves stopping to get my phone out. I could take my little action camera and maybe I will do that in future. Today I was volunteering at the local parkrun and had some time to take a few shots. Video tends to involve more work.

Henlow Bridge Lakes is a campsite just north of #Arlesey that also has some fishing lakes. They allow parkrun to happen on the tracks around the outside of the site.

This family of swans is generally around there. There were some anglers setting up too. It was a fairly mild morning and the mud may actually have dried out a little!

The paths are open to the public and lots of people run or walk their dogs around there as you can get away from the roads.

I walked through the start before anyone arrived as I was stationed on the far side of the course. There are now permanent posts to mark the start and finish, so people can run the distance any time. This is fairly typical of the conditions. There is a well worn track that can get churned up when it is wet. Having around 100 people run through each week will not help matters, but it is not too bad really.

This bit just after the start tends to be the worst for mud. There was a path through it that avoided the worst of it, but when running in a crowd you sometimes just have to take a straight route.

This was coming up to my station. Some people went through the mud on the right to overtake. There is a slight climb there, but the course it pretty flat overall.

It looked competitive at the front with one early leader getting overtaken on the last lap. There were a couple of guys in their sixties in the top ten as well as a couple of ladies. I saw a couple of baby buggies, some dogs and some ladies using walking poles. Some people just walk it, but that may be more exercise than they usually get. I wish I had been running too, but volunteers are essential.