Hissing Down in Haga 19/8/17

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go on a trip to Stockholm in Sweden to participate in the 36th Midnattsloppet 10km road run along with another 39, 999 folks. The race, however was in the late evening and before that we had the morning… and what does one do on a Saturday morning?

PARKRUN!

What a surprise there’s one (now two) in Stockholm.

The first in the country is in the Haga Park in Stockholm, not that difficult to reach for me from my hotel, thanks to the excellent public transport that took me close by. The park was only a fifteen minute walk from the metro station. I’ll gloss over the weather; it was very wet.

Quite a few hardy souls had braved the pouring rain and the squelchy cinder paths, or was that puddles? Most huddled under the trees for some protection from the downpour, minimising their warm up until the last few minutes before they removed their waterproofs.

As is the usual, the Run Director (or the far more interesting Swedish – Loppansvarig) in her briefing, asked if there were any visitors? Of course there were, this was parkrun and about 20 of the 40 participants that morning were from the U.K including the Loppansvarig herself.

At these numerically smaller (as in number of parkrunners) events the briefing and notices are over quickly and on that morning this was very welcome – standing longer only added to the collective sogginess.

Here is me before

You can see from this screen shot from my Suunto watch that the route is a fairly simple two lap course and although the day was wet, it was warm for me, and the rapid inclines certainly had me gasping for air. You know how I feel about hills. The rainfall helped keep me cool though.

.

With hindsight I probably ran too hard, especially with a 10km in the calendar twelve hours later but the challenge took hold of me and I had long enough to put my feet up and rest before the midnight run.

An interesting parkrun, with a great but soggy welcome, thanks to the core team and volunteers for coming out to allow me and others to run around the lovely Haga park.

Seemingly I was the first kilted parkrunner to run at Haga parkrun, at least I was first at something somewhere, in the parkrun universe.

At the finish with the rain still coming down heavily, here’s me with my reflection.

Tack!