Me on the Moeraki Boulders, Otago Coast, New Zealand
I started parkrun in November 2014 after having been enticed along to the Fellfoot parkrun by my friend Anna whilst visiting up in Kendal. It was in inauspicious start as I had no suitable shoes, nor shorts, so I borrowed some kit to run my first ever 5k. Surprisingly I managed the course in 26:19, and after that I was hooked.
A year later and I had run 36 parkruns all over the country - but mostly at Winchester, and got my PB down to 20:06 :)
parkrun PBs
After the celebrations had died down it was time for me to head off to New Zealand for a 3 week holiday. I had the full 3 weeks to take in as much of the country as I wanted, and naturally I was keen to see where the local parkrun courses were. There are 10 courses in New Zealand, with 8 in the North Island, and 2 on the South Island:
parkrun NZ map
Coincidentally I was flying into Auckland and meeting up with a friend in Christchurch 2 weeks later, so the first 9 would guide me nicely through the country - the only outlier would be Dunedin, which I could run sometime during my final week whilst heading around the South Island.
Fun Fact: Dunedin parkrun is the further parkrun away from my home course of Winchester, some 19185km away. Bonus Fun Fact: The two further apart parkruns, for some extreme tourist-ing, are Penrose (UK) and Dunedin (NZ), clocking in a distance of 19456km apart!
Before I headed out to NZ I did a bit of preparation, taking with me printouts of each of the courses, along with the course notes and information about how to find the starts. Finding the courses would be the easy part, but as at least 8 of these runs would be freedom runs with no marshalls I knew keeping to the official course would be the hardest part.
NZ parkrun #1 30/11/2015: Cornwall Park
Cornwall park is located in Auckland, to the south of the Central Business District, and lies next to the volcanic peak of One Tree Hill. The course was a little non-obvious to start with, but is probably easy to follow when the cones and marshals are out - especially under the trees near the start, and navigating around the bandstand. The majority of the course to the south is fairly east to guess, the only query is where to turn around - I think in the end I went a little further than I needed, just to make sure I wasn’t short.
Scoping out the route in the park
A nice place to start my tour :)
NZ parkrun #2 1/12/2015: Western Springs
The Western Springs park lies next to Auckland Zoo, so naturally after I had a wander around looking at some of the rarer native animals I did 3 laps of the adjacent lake. The start was a bit of a guess and although running around the lake was fine, there were a number of junctions later in the lap which meant that I did go wrong on the second time around.
My best guess as to where I should start
Oops, looks like I took a shortcut!
NZ parkrun #3 2/12/2015: Millwater
Millwater, just north of Auckland, was the first of the out-and-back parkruns I would run, and this one runs along a cycle/walkway along the banks of a river estuary. The concrete path was unforgiving underfoot, but it was impossible to take a wrong turn. I did some preparation before the run to work out where the turnaround point was, conveniently in a small park, so I managed to run the requisite 5k with no issues.
The probable start line
Easy to follow, no chance of getting lost
NZ parkrun #4 2/12/2015: Barry Curtis Park
I didn’t know what to expect of Barry Curtis, from Google maps it appeared to be a desolate field on the South-East extent of Auckland, but once I was there I was pleasantly surprised - The whole parkrun course was permanently signed, indication each km point, along with the start and finish lines, meaning that although I had the whole park to myself I knew exactly where I was going :) Nice one Barry Curtis (whoever you are)!
Full marks for ease of freedom-touristing!
A thoroughly nice run :)
NZ parkrun #5 5/12/2015: Hamilton Lake
My first Saturday in New Zealand and I found myself in the city of Hamilton - what a coincidence! In the summer parkruns in NZ start at 8am, so although it was a bit of a shock to my system to be up even earlier than usual, I made my way down nice and early - I even helped stake out the finish funnel :) Blue skies made this an excellent start to the weekend, and I clocked my first official parkrun outside the UK :) With only one turn required after having completed a lap of the lake this would be very easy to do as a freedom run, and my early warmup lap of the lake proved that the course was very easy to navigate without prompts from the volunteers.
Turns out the signage is even back to front in the Southern Hemisphere…
A beautiful course on a beautiful morning
NZ parkrun #6 9/12/2015: Kapiti Coast
The Kapiti Coast course runs alongside a river on a stony bridleway for its entire length. The course was nicely signed with km posts and a turnaround marker making this a very pleasant run.
Kapiti Coast map
NZ parkrun #7 9/12/2015 : Porirua
The Porirua course was another excellently signed course, even with a large advertising banner on the entrance to the carpark. With km posts set out along the route, along with a marker for the turnout point made this very easy to navigate - apart from having to wait for a moment to pass under where some trees were being pruned.
All Welcome!
Another warm day in NZ
A nice shady course to hide from the sun :)
NZ parkrun #8 9/12/2015: Lower Hutt
The Lower Hutt course was the last parkrun of the North Island, and my third before lunch, so it was quite tough. Although the course wasn’t obviously signed, I did find some km marks stencilled on the path in places. Apparently the river has flooded really badly over the years here, so they have built large banks to protect the city - the route took me along the top of the embankments out to the mouth of the river and back. High up and open to the elements this course is very prone to the wind blowing off the sea, and being next to Windy Wellington it was certainly blowing when I ran the course.
Love parkrun :)
A potentially very windy course
NZ parkrun #9 12/12/2015: Hagley Park
Hagley Park forms a large expanse of green right next to the heart of Christchurch. The course was marked by small signs put out by the Run Director just before so it was very easy to follow, and with a bit of preparation should be fine for the freedom runner. A very friendly bunch of people, and I was in good company alongside other tourist runners from the UK too :) It ended up being a very windy day, and at 8am it was already blowing a gale.
Incredibly windy down the straights
Fun Fact: As New Zealand is located at GMT+13 I was actually the 106th person to complete a parkrun that weekend :)
NZ parkrun #10 13/12/2015: Dunedin
The final parkrun, Dunedin! For this run I had company, as my friend Lucy was running with me. Set in the botanical gardens this always looked like the most difficult course to navigate given the number of paths in the park, and alas that is how it turned out. The two laps of the Rose Garden were generally fine, although it wasn’t clear exactly which paths we should have been taking, but the real problems were when we crossed the bridge to do two larger laps of some of the paths along the hills on the other side. Looking back afterwards we think we went wrong very badly on the first lap, and only slightly wrong on the second. We did 5k along roughly the right course, but the number of steps, steep hills and wrong turns will mark this course down for ease of freedom running!
It looks nice, but there are hills hidden in there!
Very confusing, very hilly!
All 10 parkrun courses done, including 2 official runs, I had a great time in New Zealand - I could think of no better way to see the country :)
#loveparkrun