Queen Elizabeth parkrun (#112)

I had been thinking about going to Queen Elizabeth parkrun for a while now: I needed the Q and also was curious about trying the course. However, there was always a reason to go somewhere else. Reason, or rather, excuse. So, this week I finally decided this was the parkrun day for QE parkrun and nothing would change that: not even the horrendous weather I saw when I woke up. Murphy’s Law never disappoints.

I have not progressed on my LonDone chase for a while now. I guess it’s ok, London venues will not run away and summer is a good time to explore the countryside and the many beautiful trail events it offers. Because the weather is good and terrain does not offer a thousand different shades of quicksands, right? Right… whatever 🙂

I now have captured my Q for the parkrun challenge alphabeteer, I have 20 letters out of 25. I am missing E, J, U, V and Y. They are all manageable in or around London, except the elusive Y. I will keep taking it as it comes, after 112 parkruns and 56 different locations I have clearly not been speedrunning this challenge. Recently, I am feeling the attraction of exploration and filling the maps. I might end up qualifying as Surrey Regionnaire before I finish London.

Back to QE parkrun: this is a tough one. Yup, one of the hardest events I’ve run. As a soft Londoner, I thought Sunny Hill or Roundshaw Downs had hard hills. They do, but they pale when compared with truly hilly trail runs like Huddinge parkrun or Queen Elizabeth parkrun. The times will be bad, yours shoes will be dirty, clothes will be drenched (bonus for QE thanks to the torrential rain) but the fun will be something to remember.

Trip to Queen Elizabeth parkrun and parking

This does not seem to be an easy one to get to by public transport. The park is near Petersfield, on the way to Portsmouth, just by the A3. According to the official course page, Petersfield train station is about 6KM from the park… not sure if you have to run from there or if you can take local transport.

For me, coming from Wimbledon, the A3 was a very convenient option, even with the never ending roadworks that seem to plague it these days. It is an easy and smooth drive and in about 50 minutes I was parked by the visitor centre.

One word of advice: slow down well in advance of the A3 exit dedicated to QE Country park: it is just after a bend and it is very sharp with a short approach.

The parking is large and right in front of the QE Country Park Visitor Centre. I arrived around 8:30am and there was still a lot of space. There seems to be another parking area much closer to where Queen Elizabeth parkrun starts, but then you will have to walk back to the Visitor Centre for toilets and refreshments, so I would recommend parking here. Parkin is chargeable and it accepts payment via card and contactless. In August 23, it was £5 for 2 hours. Not cheap.

Queen Elizabeth parkrun: start and briefings

You parked in front of the Visitor Centre, so you think you will be 20 steps from the start right? Lol, no. I made the same mistake.

Leave your car with 10/15 minutes to spare if you want to use the toilets, which are just there by the cafe. Then go back out in front of the Visitor Centre and turn right to get on a trail going behind the building on a slight incline. Behind the building you will pass by a small lake and the start area is about 600m walk uphill. Yup, why not offer a warm up showing everyone all the goodness to come! 🙂

After you cross a paved road and another nice park sign, there are 200m to walk on a step uphill path and then, around a corner, you see all the other nice people committed to inflict themselves some real pain on this parkrunday morning.

There is no large area to congregate, so people tend to lump together along the path and when I was there, given the weather, under the trees. Try to get towards the front because the RD of the day gave a very unique and entertaining briefing and I doubt people at the back could catch much of it.

Somehow there seems to be an ongoing joke about city runners showing up with road shoes: I get it. And the RD was right, after having tried the course I understand why they would call them skis here. Even with trail shoes there were times when I did not have enough grip. I’d love to see someone running this course wearing a pair of Vapourflies. 🙂

Once all the prep is done, you walk 5 minutes uphill to the official start line. Don’t worry, it is not a kind gesture, you will have to run that bit later, to make sure that the central incline is even longer. 🙂 Whomever designed this course wanted you to suffer… and suffer you will!

QE parkrun course review – star ratings

Queen Elizabeth parkrun course review – route highlights

A lot of people arrived to the briefing area at the very last moment; not sure if it is the usual habit here or if it was because it was pouring rain. Probably the latter, understandably.

It seems the event averages around 100/150 runners per week, which is a respectable field. I’m sure this is fed by a consistent trickle of tourists coming over to visit one of few UK locations available to tick the Q box on the Alphabeteer challenge. They did not ask tourists to identify themselves on the day I visited, so not sure how many there were. I guess the first few seconds might be on the slow side if you are the back, but it will thin out quickly and, anyway, you dont want to sprint out of the blocks here. You really don’t, trust me.

The course is a mix of grass and trail. The trail part does not have a lot of tree roots to navigate, but it offers mud and slippery pebbles and stones in abundance. Wear trail shoes if there has been any rain during the week, don’t risk it. I suspect, even if it has been a dry week, night moisture will probably still have some impact on the intrinsically slippery surface.

In terms of elevation profile, this is not ondulating, it is properly hilly. It is really one long steep(ish) climb, two separate step descents and one ondulating section you run twice. Fun, in a masochistic kind of way.

This week I’ve taken the elevation profile from FetchEveryone, rather than from Strava, because it shows it better and for this course it is important.

Elevation deserves a few more words here. Before running the event I found two old run reports that split the course in a perfect way, by kilometre. One is on the always excellent blog7t and one a fun read was by abradypus, a site that sadly seems to have gone dormant. Credit where credit is due, I’ve linked the original posts, but in short:

• KM 1: starts uphill and finishes on a steep downhill on grass
• KM 2: ondulating with positive gradient
• KM 3: pain pain pain… and a bit more pain
• KM 4: fun and alpine ski
• KM 5: same as km 2

The route encompasses 1 short lap and 1 longer lap with the flat(ish) section in the bottom-left corner of the route plot being repeated twice while most of the rest is mostly unique. Interesting set-up which makes the run more similar to a one lapper than a two lapper in terms of experience.

As said, you start on the forest path and immediately have to climb. It does not seem too bad because you are free and you start half way up but don’t overdo it: QE parkrun will be the parkrun that keeps on giving in terms evil climbing goodness.

At the top of this short climb, you turn sharp right and switch to a grassy, slippery and steep descent. It is fun and it is not too hard to negotiate with trail shoes, so you can bag some speed and time for the bad times (they will come). That said, you need to mind your step: I’m usually pretty happy to let it go on downhills, but my pace here ended up being slower than I would have on similar slopes.

At the bottom of the hill, another sharp right and you have probably slightly less than 1K on paths that seem flat but flat are not. It is ondulating with a couple of steep short climbs, with muddy cobblestone surface and plenty of grass trying to reclaim its home. With good weather, the view of the South Downs to your right and in front of you must be something to remember. In the middle of a storm, it was nice.

At the end of this section, you turn sharp right yet again and you are where the briefing took place. You remember that steep section you walked before? Now you have to run it uphill: surprise, surprise 🙂

Once you get to the ‘start’, you keep running uphill until you reach the spot where you turned into the grassy descent before. Tired from the climb, you are glad to be there and enjoy some fun downhill… but you see that a smiley and slightly sadistic volunteer has now cordoned the turn off and shows you to keep going straight… AND UP.

I’d love to meet the course designer, this is a really nice touch and I imagine him or her spending Saturday mornings letting go a resounding evil laugh in their villain lair somewhere in a cave inside a volcano. With minions.

This climb will end up being a full KM, with the pain partially mitigated by the beautiful mature trees on both sides of the trail. It’s not terribly steep, but it is long. Long. Very long.

At the top, you turn right again and meet the big brother of the first grassy downhill. It feels less steep (hence less refreshing), but it goes on for a while and you can have good fun here until turning right again at the bottom where you will have to run the continuation of the ondulating section of the first lap. Until you reach that part, run it again and finally reach your well deserved rest. You will see the finish funnel from afar and for a few seconds it will look like a mirage, an oasis in the desert while you pant and suffer. It is real and there really is a token there. Yahoo!

The finish funnel is short and efficient, with fast rotating scanners before you can crawl downhill and roll your corpse covered in mud to the cafe for some well deserved refresh

Facilities at QE parkrun

Queen Elizabeth Country park seems to be a great place to spend the whole day at. That was actually my plan, had the skies not decided to start a new Great Flood just while I was there. Noah was late on building an ark, so I did not get to explore as planned.

As said, the Visitors Centre is just by the main car park and this includes toilets that are open by 8:30am. So all migratory parkrunners’ needs can be dealt with before walking over to the start. Just don’t park by the start, you will be sorry if you do. The toilets are clean and well tended to.

After your run, after taking a few minutes to turn back from a panting puddle into a human being again, you will want calories and refreshments. And, in a day like the one I was there, warm drinks. The cafe is in the same building and it looks modern with nice spaces both inside and outside. In terms of food choices, it is kind of lacking, with a few nice options but very little variety and certainly not as much as you would probably expect given the facilities.

As a competitor to the McDonald’s index, I am continuing to collect data for the parkbreakfast index: how much is breakfast at each location? At Queen Elizabeth parkrun I ordered a lemon drizzle, a Diet Coke and a single espresso and this cost me £7.7, on the high side and in line with the upper end of the central band of what you would need to pay in London. I guess that’s what happens when you have a monopoly in the area.

Queen Elizabeth parkrun: Video Highlights

As usual, I’ve taken a few video snippets during the run to give an idea of the course. If you like it, please subscribe, it’s a fun past time for me 🙂

The other parkrun videos on my YouTube channel are all linked on the course review and video highlights summary page.

• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

---

Achievements and performance

Conclusions

It is painful, maybe the hardest parkrun course I have had the pleasure to tackle so far. But it is fun, I am a runner so I guess I have a penchant for inflicting pain on myself. The location is beautiful, the team seem to be very friendly and welcoming and the best pre-run briefing to date topped it off.

I have a sneaky suspicion I might be back in the future for another dose of pain and to try getting a better time.

Thank you, Queen Elizabeth parkrun for your hospitality! See you again… but not too soon! 🙂