After a few weeks on the road, it was time to visit one of our more local events again today with my first trip to Springburn since May. Got to manage my carbon pawprint you know.
With its wide paths and gentle undulations, Springburn is one of my favourite Glasgow parkruns and is the human’s third most completed parkrun with a dozen visits.
Today’s Crumble factoid: Glasgow Corporation acquired the land for Springburn Park in 1892. At this time the land was mixed agricultural land with the remains of an ironstone pit at one corner and an old quarry at the other.
The short commute meant a relatively late alarm this morning though the recycling collection at 7:30am put paid to any thoughts of a long lie. Whilst it happens every weekend my sister Maizie still gets spooked every Saturday and barks her head off like a maniac. What a pain!
We went to Springburn today with our regular parkun buddy Claire and got there nice and early. Whilst the humans wanted to stay in the car for a bit to enjoy the warmth I wasn’t having any of it. There’s no keeping Crumble from the park!
We had a nice little canter round the park first. I got to play in the leaves, played fetch with his gloves and chased some birds. No birds were harmed in the warm-up though. We did one lap of the course in reverse.
We then saw Alison, Fran, Amy and a few more of dad’s running friends. It was especially nice to see Amy and Claire running again after injury. I got lots of attention and pampering at the start and was loving it. Given the last time I was here I went for an unplanned swim in the pond (my kind of cool down) I was kept well away from there this time. How disappointing!
After a fairly congested start I got on my race face (yes I know they say it’s a run not a race but I’m not buying that fake news) and we enjoyed the downhill start as always though the long climb near the finish area is always a challenge. There were a few icy patches so we took it fairly cautiously.
We almost had a bit of a disaster on the first lap. I couldn’t decide which side I wanted to run on and crossed from left to right to left in front of and behind Jim and managed to wind the lead round his leg. He stumbled but managed to regain his balance and hop over the lead to avoid an embarrassing fall. Not quite the parkun trip we had in mind. I’ll maybe get him next time 🙂
This little incident knocked us out our stride for a bit and it took us a while to get our pace back up again (can you tell I’m getting in all the excuses in case we don’t break 25 minutes this week).
It was the first of two problems this week. When we got home the human discovered that my parkrun dogs buff had come off so we must have lost it in the park. Don’t tell Maizie but I’ll have to start stealing hers.
We managed to push on in the second half of the run today before running out of steam a bit in the last climb before the finish. We finished in 25:22 which was pretty decent. About 25 seconds slower than my last time here but happy with that (not sure if I mentioned the ice and tangling incidents which probably cost us a bit of time today).
After finishing we went back to cheer on Crumble’s Angels. They were all in great form today and both Amy and Claire seemed to have no after-effects so they’re well on the road to recovery.
I also got to say hello to a little girl who was wearing a woolly coat almost exactly like mine. She was very sweet and as nervous as I was. I don’t growl so dad was very proud (and relieved).
A great job today by Pauline and the gang of volunteers, especially the mobile disco/karaoke marshal, the doggy marshal and Bobby whose pre-race banter and count-down is second to none in Scotland.
The human’s off to India next weekend so no parkun for me it seems. Think we might venture back to Drumchapel then Queen’s Park over the next few weeks before some tourism around Christmas, weather permitting of course.
Crumble out x
Let's get ready 4 Crumble 
Lovely pictures. Blyth Parkrun was very, very wet x
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