- Location: Ealing – UB1 3Ay
- Terrain: Fast tarmac. One very short section on hard path
- Elevation: 31m. Flat as a pancake
- Parking: Green Drive had some free on street spots avaiable at 8.45am
- Facilities: neither toilets nor cafe available on site
- Attendance: small, around 70/80 runners
- Last visited on: 25 Mar 2023
- Number of visits: 1
- PB: 30:16
I woke up late and feared my plans would have to change for this Saturday, Southall parkrun is not exactly around the corner. The rain and general gloominess of the weather did not help, but in the end I still managed to get myself through a quick breakfast and on my car for the trip to Ealing leaving home about 15 minutes later than planned. It’s a longish drive from Wimbledon, but at that time of the morning on weekends it is not too bad. And I am proud of myself for not giving in to the little devil in my head telling me to go back to bed.
My fear was that arriving at 8:45 I would not find parking, also because the parking information on the official course page is minimal. I get encouraging the use of public transport, but from where I live it is not very easy, so I took the risk… at worst I could try a last minute re-routing to run at Osterley a second time.
By the time I got there there were probably a couple of car spots left on the free parking lanes along Green Drive, the the East of the park. It is a very residential areas with plenty of drives that need to be left unobstructed, so if going there on a summer day with presumably higher attendance levels, I recommend getting there before 8:30 if you need to drive. Green Drive is probably 3/400m walk from the start, which you can kind of see from the entrance of the park, so no fear of getting lost. Parking seems to be free of charge, or at least I did not see any payment machines or mobile payment codes.
When I arrived, I was a bit weirded out and concerned seeing plenty of trucks and motor homes in the park. They were clearly preparing to set up a fun fair and I’ve seen plenty of events cancelled for that reason, but I was lucky and everything went ahead as planned. Talking to some of the local volunteers, this seems to be the first time a fair is located in the park.
As indicated on the course page, no cafe nor toilets in the park. I have not seen any cafe in the immediate edges of the park, but I am sure if you look for something for past run breakfast, there must be options around. The walk from the entrance of the park to the start area is pleasant, the park is nice and well looked after and you mostly walk along children playing areas and particularly well supplied outdoor gyms. A lot of locals walking around at this time already and plenty of doggos.
Location
Parking
Facilities
Hills (lower is easier)
Terrain (lower is easier)
There wasn’t a first timer briefing on the day and the main briefing was pretty quick and hard to hear. The Southall parkrun start location is on a nice tree-lined paved ‘avenue’ in the middle of the park. Atmosphere is particularly friendly, I get the feeling this is an event where there is a well established and consistent core group with people who enjoy seeing each other for a weekly jog.
The course is 3 laps and a bit. It gets pretty wiggly, which is fun and there are volunteers and cones at every turn where you could get confused. Also, it had a pretty small field on the day (around 70), so things spread around fast, but you always see someone a few hundred metres ahead of you at worst.
After a short loop around the start area, you essentially run along the perimeter of the park. The view changes and it keeps things interesting, but this park is very urban, so the field of view is usually pretty focused on the park itself and its features rather than sprawling views across it or outside of it.
At Southall parkrun, the surface is even tarmac and I think you could get fast times here. Flat as a pancake… there are faster courses in London, but this must be a top 10 one in my experience (I’ve tried about half of the london ones so far).
Volunteers greet you with a smile at the end, with scanning of the last turn at the roundabout.
Southall parkrun video highlights
As usual, I’ve take a few video snippets during the run to give an idea of the course. If you like it, please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, it’s a fun past time for me 🙂
My course review and video highlights index post include a lot more parkrun goodness to have fun with.
It was event 62, so no barbaric crowds of tourists descending on the venue for some specific number challenge.
Weird thing with the finish time, which ended up being about 1 minute slower than what my Garmin said and I’m pretty sure i started the watch bang on the ‘Go’. There might have been some mix-up with the timing, but no big deal, it was a crap time anyway. I need to get consistent with my training again if I want to be serious about times again. I’m now 5 minutes slower than my 5K PB and 4 minutes slower than my parkrun PB from 6 months ago.
I ticked a couple of achievement boxes this week:
- 1 more new location, getting me to 45/94
- One more S for Snakes, now at 5/10
- One more tick for Date Bingo (26%)
- 32/61 for Lon-Done, more than half way done!
Nice urban park with a small field and enthusiastic volunteers. Given how small the park is, the run is surprisingly interesting, I enjoyed it!
And I think this is a route that can give you a good finish time if you push it and care about it. Even if nearly 1h drive from where I live, I think I will eventually come back if I get my fitness up to scratch eventually
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