Lloyd parkrun

I continued ticking off the muddy venues this week, with my second visit to Lloyd parkrun, in South London.

After visiting a new venue at Hackney Marshes last week, as I often try to do, this week I decided to re-visit a London venue that I had already visited before starting this blog. I am not only trying to achieve LonDone status, but also document all London parkruns, so I have to alternate. As I said before, most of the pleasure is in the journey, not the achievement of a fake internet badge, so no rush. Also, the journey became a little bit longer today, since a new venue was added to the London roster of events: Morden parkrun. Super stealthy launch, which I understand (kind of), but left me with a bit of a sour taste. I can run there in 10 minutes, so I think I definitely qualify as local and I hoped it could be my first (and last) inaugural to kick start the Wilson Index, among other things.

I still have 10 venues I need to ‘re-visit’. I am trying to keep the potentially very muddy ones for the summer, or at least this weird excuse for a summer we are getting in 2024. Lloyd parkrun is supposed to be one of the worst in terms of winter terrain and that compounds the already moderately challenging elevation gains. So it was on top of my list! I don’t think I will ever experience mud comparable to what I found when I visited Woking parkrun however: that was off the scale!

Lloyd parkrun has a reputation: some claim it is probably the hardest parkrun in London. It is a real cross country course, with elevation, grass, narrow paths and tree roots, so it certainly has its challenges, but I don’t think it is as bad as some people paint it to be. Somehow, I still think Sunny Hill wins the prize among all London parkruns I’ve run. But I have not experienced Lloyd parkrun in winter, both my visits were in good weather… I guess I need to check it out!

Anyway, enough with my rumblings. It’s time to dive into some more info about Lloyd parkrun!

Trip to Lloyd parkrun and parking

Lloyd park sits at the Southern side of Croydon. The beautiful part of it; you can see the monstrosities of the town centre from the course, but it feels 100 miles away. This is a truly beautiful, rural-ish part of town that is worth a visit, if all you know about Croydon are run-down skyscrapers and the forgotten Whitgift Centre. Westfield dithering did not help the area, I guess.

Reaching Lloyd parkrun couldn’t be easier if you have access to the tram line. Lloyd Park has its own tram stop metres away from the cafe and the meeting point.

If you are driving, get to Croydon, leave the town centre behind and then on towards Coombe Road. The park has its own car park, which is accessible from the road cutting through the tram line. When you turn left, be careful, because there are no traffic lights, so you need to check there are no trams coming yourself. They are pretty big boys. The car park is free up to 3 hours, but you need to go to the machine and print a ticket or you will get a fine. Parking enforcement staff seem to enjoy Saturday morning visits: you have been warned.

Lloyd parkrun: start and briefings

If you are coming from the tram stop, just walk to the car park and the cafe. If you have left your vehicle in the car park, then even before leaving it, you are sitting in front of the meeting point. You can see the flags and a few people already chatting around them. Unusually, there were far fewer people until the very last minute when I visited than usual at other events. Maybe it was because of the awful weather for mid June, maybe it is normal here, but I thought it would be a pretty small field until the main briefing. It was not, in the end.

From the car park, you can literally walk over the grass bump and reach the meeting point. Or be a good boy/girl and walk towards the cafe, enter the park from its main gate, then immediately turn left and reach the same area in one minute.

On the day I visited, a fenced off fun fair was in the park, taking up a substantial area next to the cafe and the meeting point. Good thing: it did not mean the event had to be cancelled. Less good thing: the visual impact in the park was less open and scenic than what it could be. And what I remember from my first visit. Never mind, I don’t think they are here very often.

The First Timers briefing is called around 8:45, with people congregating between the cafe and the field. Then the volunteer giving it this week asked everyone to move to the outside sitting area of the cafe, to use a large map of the park while explaining the course. Big thanks to the gentleman who gave the briefing this week: he really made everyone feel welcome and gave the briefing a fun twist.

Then it is time to walk back to the meeting area, with people lining up for a wide start on grass a few metres further on. From the grass bump separating the field from the car park, the RD started the Main Briefing, again with a contagious level of enthusiasm and energy.

Once this is done as well, no need to move elsewhere. Everyone is already lined up along the start line.

Finally, it comes: it is the countdown. 3, 2, 1.

Time to go!

Lloyd parkrun course review – star ratings

Lloyd parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 224 parkrunners on the day I visited. Not a huge number for London standards, but still a substantial turnout. In general, it seems average attendance runs between 170-250, depending on the week. There seems to be pretty strong seasonality here, with numbers moving towards the lower 100s in the middle of winter. I think these attendance levels are ok and the course could probably accomodate more.

The course does not have any obvious bottleneck and it is, mostly in very open environments. However, the path is often quite narrow, with areas to the sides that are not perfect for overtaking easily. In several occasions I found myself slowing down because there was a bunch of runners in the way. Not something that made the experience more enjoyable, but some active overtaking might be needed here, with the additional energy expenditure it requires.

Surface-wise, most of the course is on hard path. At least when it is dry: it seems during wet months the path remains a path, but definitely not a hard one. Mud seems to be a consistent feature, with areas along the route where water flows down the hill. Besides this, there are substantial portions of the course on grass and one short section on tarmac. I ran wearing road shoes and it was ok, but I am sure trail shoes would have been better and they would be required most of the year.

Elevation-wise, at 79m elevation gain over 2 laps, this is not Wendover Woods, but it is a noticeably hilly course. There are two uphill sections: one mild one and one aggressive climb structured as an out and back roughly mid-way through each lap. Neither is impossibly painful, but you will feel the second one in your legs.

In terms of course design, it is quite simple. Two laps around the perimeter of the course, with one horn mid way. The horn is your out and back, up and down bit. Also known as the main hill.

A quick Relive route plot is on my YouTube Channel, with longer video highlights embedded below.

Since the final briefing happens when everyone has already lined up, it transitions very quickly into the countdown, so be ready for it. As already said above, I expected a very small turnout from the number of people walking around before everything started, but when I watched the characteristic parkrun human blob starting to move around, it was actually a good field! It is a wide start on grass, so there is no fighting for position. At least at the very start.

Soon after the mass start, the herd vies for the cafe and climbs up to its paved side. Since we were sharing the park with a funfair, this forced everyone to start lining up into a narrower line. It will be absolutely necessary pretty soon, so the funfair only made it happen about 200m earlier than usual. When you get up to the cafe, you run by it and then turn right at the end. Not a 90 degrees turn, though, because running laps around a small cafe could be pretty boring and be even more repetitive than Highbury Fields. Instead, here you cut diagonally through the fields until you join a path that heads towards the woods.

For about 75/100m you keep running straight towards the woods, then it is time to enter them. The parkrun gods decided everyone needed to have a taste of what’s to come here. You don’t only get a scenic transition to mature woodland, you get it with a steep, while very short, little climb. Don’t feel to proud of yourself once you jump up with no (visible) sweat: this is just a tiny little amuse-bouche, not even an appetiser. I had written appetiser first, then changed it, it would not have shown enough respect to the real hill to come.

The next section is beautiful and only moderately challenging. It is a continuous transitioning between mature woodland and little clearings that look great in bright sunlight. It is a mild uphill, but it spread over a long distance, so you don’t really suffer it… much. A bit more than half way through this section, everyone takes a 90-degrees turn left around a tree, for another very similar section that then morphs into a trail with large open fields on its left. The consistent thing across both portions is that the path is very narrow, 2 people at most. So, with the exception of certain points in the clearings, overtaking is not terribly easy.

At the end of the section described above, you reach a volunteer guarding an assuming spot at the border of a field. Here you will find a very sharp turn right followed immediately by a short, steep downhill on hard path, stones and roots. Watch your foot and enjoy. Immediately after, it is time to run around 3 sides of an open field. This is mostly, but not heavily, downhill. Enjoy the views (I personally really liked watching back when 2/3 in and seeing the uninterrupted line of parkrunners coming behind me), but don’t push too much. You will know why soon.

Once you finish the third segment of this short section, another volunteer with a lot of compassion in their eyes shows you that you need to turn right. And you turn, wondering why that volunteer looked so empathetic. Immediately, you enter a path under mature trees and you have to climb. A lot. It is steep, but it is not too long, maybe 30/40 metres. You see the light at the end, you can survive it, so you use all of your energy storage to brave it and get out in to the light. You are entering the ‘weird’ out and back segment you can see in the map… and you do it realising the person who designed the course had a twisted sense of humour. What do you find at the end of the climb through woodlands? Another climb, this time on grass. Fun! This is not as steep, but it is significantly longer.

3/4 through, things flatten out, until you reach a tree, turn around it and start the ‘back’ section, which alternates the same flat/downhill gradients. At the end, you re-enter the woodlands and roll down a steep and pretty messy terrain. It is fun actually. When it is time to exit the wood patch, you turn right and keep going down, coasting the fields where everything started from up above. Continue on this segment until a short uphill into another small tree covered corner that is followed by another steeper downhill. This ends into the same level where you started and joined a paved path. A couple 100m on this paved path and after some fenced sport courts, you turn left and left again to get within sight of the start. Reach it cutting across a field and then it is time to aim for the cafe again for lap 2. Because you definitely want to do grassy hill again!

At the end of the second lap, instead of heading for the cafe, take a soft left towards the middle of the field, where you can see the finish funnel. Oh, how sweet it looks after braving that hill twice!

Congratulations on surviving Lloyd parkrun!

Facilities at Lloyd parkrun

Once you leave your car, you are already in front of the main hub in the area, the Lloyd Park Cafe. It is a nice building on the edge of the park, facing both the fields and the car park.

It is a nice cafe, with a good food selection, good service and plenty of seats both inside and outside. The outside seating area is particularly nice in good weather. As you would expect, when I visited last time it was pouring after the event.

Toilets are at the back of the same building. They were open before the event, but they are three single stalls, so a queue formed quickly.

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 Lloyd parkrun, I ordered a single espresso, a Diet Coke and a brownie. This cost £5.6, which is definitely fair for London parkrun cafes.

Lloyd 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.

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Achievements and performance

Conclusions

Lloyd parkrun definitely has a reputation, and I have played with it a bit in my course description. Don’t get me wrong, it is a challenging course and even when I was in better shape, I had finished it 3/4mins slower than what used to be my usual cruising time then. And I am sure it must be even harder in winter. Nonetheless, it is not that scary, it is actually a pretty enjoyable course, with nice open views and an imaginative course design. On top of that, an incredible group of volunteers with unmatched energy: I rarely felt so genuinely welcome into the party atmosphere!

This was my second visit and now I definitely have to come a third time in winter.

Finally, obviously, thank you, Lloyd parkrun team for your hospitality, once again!