Photos From ParkRun Facebook Site
By Carol Wolstenhome
Park Run One: New Years Day 2020
Come on, kids. We’re going to Park Run. Happy New Year!
‘Remember,’ I tell them, ‘Don’t run too quickly. If you run as fast as you can, you’re going to be tired before you’re half-way round.’
That’s covered it, I think to myself.
‘Okay, Mummy,’ says Big Girl, now 8.
‘Okay, Mummy,’ says Tiddler.
Park-run is heaving. Most of Hillsborough seems to be here. And some of them are even smiling; perhaps Yorkshire folk don’t drink as much as the Scots.
Oh, my Goodness. The queue for the start-line is already really long.
‘Let’s stop here,’ I say firmly to Tiddler and Toddler.
‘But Mummy,’ says Tiddler. That’s not the start. We need to be at the front!’
Ì literally grab hold of Tiddler to stop him from going further forwards, which proves a mistake: he gives me the slip.
In fact, he makes a desperate run for it, elbowing forward through a forest of increasingly toned runner’s calves.
‘No Tiddler!’ I call, desperately engaging my elbows to follow him. ‘Tiddler!! Will you Come Back!’
And he is lost. And Big Girl’s shouting me to come back, from somewhere behind. You don’t even get crowds like this in Meadowhell on Black Friday. Why hadn’t I thought to explain to Tiddler in advance how the start works?
The stampede begins. The pressing issue is, to slow down or speed up? I can feel my eldest’s despair far behind me. On the other hand, Tiddler is much smaller. ‘Sorry!’ I tell Big Sprog, as I give chase.
I find Tiddler. Half a lap from the start; he has finally run out of acceleration and is standing on the path, most bewildered. It’s not nice being overtaken by everybody at park-run. But some lovely people have stopped to help him out.
‘Mummy!’ He sobs, clinging onto me. ‘I’m going to be last! I just want to st-o-o-op!’
But we didn’t. God knows that we didn’t. You know the horrific pushy Mummies you sometimes get at these events, who give their kids lectures that would do Mrs. Weasley proud?
‘You never do that to me again, you should have listened when i asked you to come back! Now you’re tired and it serves you right and if you think I’m stopping because you didn’t listen……’
BANG! goes my New Years Resolution.
Luckily, salvation comes, in the shape of other children. The closer to the back we get, the more friends we manage to make. And eventually, right at the end, we stumble into Big Sprog. A kind passing stranger had chatted to her as they went round.
What’s more, the stranger doesn’t say ‘What Kind of Idiot Mummy are you?’
That’s how unbelievably lovely folk are, at Park-Run.
Park Run week Two
‘Remember,’ I tell Toddler, ‘Don’t run too quickly. Ìf you run as fast as you can, you’re going to be tired in two minutes.’
‘Ok,’ says Toddler.
(I only have one small child with me today. By preference this would have been the other one, but Big Sprog’s elsewhere).
Toddler runs off really fast and overtakes lots of people. Again, he can get through gaps between runners that I simply can’t.
‘Remember last time,’ I shout after him, but he shouts back ‘Mummy! You’re going to make me last!’
The crowds aren’t quite so dense today, so I decide to risk waiting for him to slip back.
That proves a mistake. When I finally catch him, he’s nigh on inconsolable:
‘People keep overtaking me! And I’m hu-u-u-ngry! Can we stop?’
‘No we CANT! You wanted to do park-run; we’ve blooming well doing Park-run. What posessed you to go off at that speed again?”
I feel a few hundred slow runners judging me as they jog past.
Luckily we meet a woman who is running on her own. She seems to be lot nicer than I am. Toddler has a magnet for friendly people and immediately is telling her all about himself, and he’s smiling.
After a while, Toddler decides she’s too slow for him and speeds off again. Ì follow on, begging him to slow down.
Five minutes later, Tiddler’s energy surge is diminished and I’m feeding him cereal bars, begging him to put one foot in front of the other.
The kind woman overtakes us again.
Tiddler starts to talk to her.
This is repeated a few times before he settles down and the three of us run around together.
I, of course, am totally mortified. This poor person was out for a serious run before she started looking after my Sprog. It really was super-kind of her and she is doing a far better job than I was.
Sometimes I am so wrapped up in my own mortification that I don’t have empathy for others.
Tiddler has been happily distracting his new friend all this time. I don’t think she knew how fast they were running. As we approach the finish-line, she gasps:
‘I’ve just done a personal best!’
The Kindness of Strangers PHOTO BY JON ANDERSON
My Body, My Own 