Coventry parkrun

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Date of Visit

19/11/2022

Number of runners

546

Event Number

564

Visit Number

7 for me. It’s only 25 minutes from home though we don’t visit all that often.

Results

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/coventry/results/564/

parkrun Link

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/coventry

Facebook Page

https://www.facebook.com/coventryparkrun

Strava Segment

https://www.strava.com/segments/19343933

Weather

Better than we were expecting. Heavy rain for most of the week and the forecast didn’t seem great but it turned out to be lovely. Clear blue skies, no wind and temperature was only about 8 degrees but couldn’t really feel it in the sun.

Getting There

If coming by car it’s pretty straight forward. Junction 6 from the ring road towards the train station and then signs for the memorial park. If you’re coming from M42 direction it’s two minutes off the A45.

Train station is a mile away and it’s straight road to walk to the park

Being so close to the train station it’s also well served by bus.

Facilities

The park also hosts the park and ride for the city so parking is plentiful and free for three hours. Barrier controlled and you are given a ticket but you don’t need to do anything with it if you’re under three hours.

Toilets are available at the park visitor centre. They aren’t massive so be prepared for a queue if you time it wrong.

For that post run drink there is a cafe in the visitor centre and I also spotted a dessert van not far away

Briefings and Volunteers

This one of the biggest parkruns in the Midlands so it’s run like a well oiled machine. There are signs everywhere! First timer brief is easy to find (again they have a sign!). The main briefing is a bit harder to follow sometimes. This is not a criticism though, it’s purely part of being such a large parkrun. They have a microphone and speaker but depending on where you are it’s not always easy to hear.

It’s a pretty easy route to follow but there are lots of enthusiastic volunteers cheering you on.

This is also the only parkrun we’ve visited that regularly has BSL interpreters.

Start line and finish funnel

Considering this is an event that routinely gets over 500 runners they do amazing well to get a start line setup. The event starts on a very long and wide path so they are able to get those numbers going pretty quickly. Did I mention they have signs? Loads of expected finish time signs around to get people going off safely too. Downside to being such a big event though is that unless you’re right at the front it can take you some time just to get across the start line. It took Bryony 20 seconds this week and while that doesn’t sound like a lot of time it is definitely something that will impact on your overall time if you’re looking for a PB.

Finish funnel is really good. It’s on the same path the event starts and is long enough to cope with lots of people finishing at once. They had plenty of people to manage the funnel and two people on token duty. One to hand out and one to keep them with a supply of tokens so they don’t have to stop. You’re then spat onto a big patch of grass with plenty of room for getting your token scanned.

Highly efficient!

Course

2 laps.

Really straightforward. It’s two laps of the park. It’s three left turns and a right to finish with marshals on each of the sections so it’s not a course you’re going to get lost on. The whole thing is on good paths so no worries about slipping or sliding in the wet. It’s reasonably fast course though it’s not totally flat. There are a couple of climbs and while they aren’t big ones they will have a little bit of an impact.

Paths are all pretty wide and they do a great job of accommodating so many runners you do have to be careful of other park users. There were some spots where people can get too spread out making it difficult for people walking in the other direction. The Facebook page reported they’d had some complaints this week too.

Shoes

Road. No need for anything else!

Short or Long? (based on our watches and checking out other Strava profiles)

Bang on for me. Last time I came they’d had to move the start/finish lines because of covid rules and it seemed to make the course a touch long. I wanted pace the run for a PB attempt and I pretty much got it spot on but that slight increase meant I missed it by seconds! Was very pleased to see the return of the previous finish line 😆

Andy Stats

parkrun number:

70

Tourist event number:

33

Official time:

18:43

Position:

20 (74% age grade)

Bryony Stats

parkrun number:

57

Tourist event number:

26

Official time:

36:02

Position

455 (42.69% age grade)  133rd Female

How did it go?

Andy – really well. Better than I expected to be honest. I’ve had a weird couple of weeks running wise with illness and some injury niggles but I was feeling ok on the start line and was keen to see what I could do on this course as it’s been so long since I ran here it would be a good marker of progress. I ended up running my second fastest ever parkrun and taking almost a minute and a half off my Coventry time.

Bryony – didn’t feel like she’d done too badly, considering she hadn’t run for a couple of weeks. Although the size of the event does mean for a very congested start, (highlighted considerably comparing watch and parkrun times), she feels on the flip side this also means it’s a friendly parkrun for the slower runner with plenty of people in your pace bracket all the way round.

Return Visit Likely?

Yes. This was actually my first parkrun venue in 2017 but only my seventh visit. Considering it’s relatively close to where we live its usually low down on our list of places to visit. We’re sometimes a bit put off with how busy it can get but mainly as it’s just far enough away that if we were going to drive that far there are loads of others in a similar range for us to try. We’ll almost certainly be back though as it’s actually a lovely place to run.

Pictures and that.