Oaklands College parkrun

Last parkrunday I drove all the way around London to visit Oaklands College parkrun in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, for the first time. This is a relatively new event, with my visit happening on event number 9 only, so you can still fell some of the initial buzz and observe hordes of tourists coming to explore.

I have had this event on my planner for a while, because it was a pretty unique opportunity to add an ‘event 9’ to my Wilson Index. I am taking it comfortably and not obsessively, but it is a fun addition to the series of parkrun challenges I track and use to guide my explorations. At the lower end of the series I have no collected events 2-9, with 10 hopefully coming soon. Will I ever be able to bag myself a 1? Controversy aside, I hoped Morden parkrun would deliver that, since I can walk to it, but I was not one of the few who could join their inaugural. We’ll see what the future brings.

Oaklands College parkrun is a new event, but it had already achieved a good amount of visibility on parkrun social media during its first few weeks. Why? Because of the ungodly amount of mud on its course! Some of the pictures I saw could definitely compete with the muddiest events I have survived. Places like Lloyd parkrun, Woking parkrun or Walthamstow parkrun. However, the team seems to be a bit less sadistic than in other places and designed a new course to avoid the swamps. Event 9 was the third time the new course was used and while there was still a fairly muddy segment, the rest was pretty clear and firm.

This visit also represented the second visit to this area North of London, which is quite a trip for a SW London dweller like me. The other one was Jersey Farm parkrun, a very nice event I visited for obvious alphabeteer reasons.

Anyway, enough with my rumblings. It’s time to dive into some more info about Leybourne Lakes parkrun! (Did i say it used to be called Malling parkrun? Just making sure the SEO gods don’t hate me 🙂 )

Trip to Oaklands College parkrun and parking

This great new event takes place at Oaklands College, a multipurpose campus on the Eastern fringes of St. Albans, in Hertfordshire.

According to the official event site, the closest train station is St. Albans City, which would still leave you about 45 minutes walk from Oaklands College parkrun meeting point. I guess if you are a morning person (I am not!), this could be a pleasant early morning walk in good weather. However, there are also several buses listed on the event site that can cut the walking time down.

Not that I would ever see myself going all the way to this event by public transport, but I checked how it would work on Citymapper and it would have taken me around 3hrs. So yeah, not happening.

If you are driving, though, St. Albans is very close to the M25. So very convenient early morning on parkrunday to get there and, most likely, carnage late morning to leave. As it usually is the case, after all. Once you approach the campus, a parkrun flag will be waiting for you at the gates, to eliminate any potential doubt you are in the right place.

Once you drive into the campus, follow the road and there will be 2 volunteers showing you the way to one of the several large parking options. There are several signs showing payment options and warning you that there are APR checks in place, but when I tried paying via the website they indicated, it did not seem to work. I asked a volunteer and she said parking was free. All looks rather new, so I assume they have just not started taking payments yet, but I might be wrong.

Once you get there, the meeting point is a couple of minutes walk away.

Oaklands College parkrun: start and briefings

Once you are in the car parks, just head towards the Mansion House. You know that big brown building that looks historical – no idea if it really is or not, though. There is a little gate by the side of the mansion house and off the smaller car park. This will lead you to the front of the mansion house, where the meeting point is located on a small clearing. I was greeted by a nice cow cardboard, not sure if it is parkrun related, but it put me in a good mood.

Toilets are a few minutes walk away, so don’t rush there at the last minute if you need to. But more on that below.

Both briefings are held in from the same place and in rapid succession. So when things start, everything will naturally transition into the main event, no waiting times in between steps. Once the volunteers start going on the steps of the mansion house, it will be time for the First Timers briefing. At such an early age, Oaklands Collage parkrun still seems to be a tourist magnet. The vast majority of people joined the First Timers briefing proving that. Describing the course is pretty complicated, so I will admit I did not fully understand it, but one thing was clearly stressed and stuck to my mind: keep right to avoid carnage. And that will prove to be a good recommendation with all the double flow turnaround sections to come.

The RD then quickly takes over for a swift Main Briefing, before asking everyone to turn 180-degrees on themselves and head towards the fields behind them, pointing across them parallel to the Mansion House.

Then, I heard the RD start the countdown. 3, 2, 1, go!. The party had begun.

Oaklands College parkrun course review – star ratings

Oaklands College parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 155 parkrunners on the day of my visit to Oaklands College parkrun. The event is definitely still too young to assess what average attendance levels can be once things stabilise. I think the first few events were under the influence of two opposing forces. First, the magnetic pull new events have on tourists and that’s still the case with a very large part of the field on my event being just that. On the other side, I think the swamp conditions the course endured before changing might have deterred some locals. Who knows where things will settle here. The course works well for the numbers it currently has and I think it can host more, with the only limitations put by the double flow out and back sections. I have no doubt 200 would be fine, maybe even 300, but above that it could become a bit of a meat grinder.

The course has several 180-degrees turning point. They are all fairly comfortably wide, but if you approach them in a large group, they will be busy. And even if you don’t, they will slow you down. Besides that, paths are usually reasonably wide, there are not gates or bollards and you can usually run quite comfortably.

Surface-wise, it is a mix of grass, hard path and soft, muddy path. Nothing comparable to the seriously muddy pictures from the first few weeks, but trail shoes remain recommended unless you come during a protracted dry spell. Mud is concentrated on the longest straight to the South of the course at the moment and it was never terrible, but it did influence where people would run.

Elevation-wise, 19m elevation gain over 1 out and back lap, there is some mild elevation here and there, but it is definitely leaning towards a flat profile. Thinking about it now, I remember knowing there were sections with some gradients, but I can’t really place them easily on the course. I think that’s confirmation that they are barely noticeable.

Course layout is not easy to describe. High level, it is 3 out and back sections connected to each other in one single lap. I think the map above makes it clearer and I will try to describe it better below.

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

Once it is time to go, everyone lines up on the field in front of the mansion house facing East parallel to the house itself. It’s a wide start on grass, so congestion will not be a problem here. First you cross the fields in a straight line on grass and fairly firm grounds. Then, at the end, 90-degree turn right and on to a path. The path will continue to the end of the field, when it’s time for another 90-degrees turn that goes back parallel to the first straight. Roughly half way through this segment, turn 90-degrees left and start a short segment still on a good hard path until the edge of the grounds.

At the end, a 90-degree turn right gets you into the side dirt road that runs at the edge of the park. You will go up and down this road a few times. It has ‘tracks’ full of softer mud and elevated grassy sections in the middle and to the sides. The side ones are the least muddy ones, it seems. After you turn right, you start the first short out and back. A short segment until the 180-degree turnaround point and back. When you reach the stop where you had entered this path first, you keep going. Aaaaaaaall the way down, to the end of this dirt road. You will pass by a marshal which markets the turning point on your way back afterwards.

This segment was the muddiest one, but we no one was reported missing, so I think the quicksands did not swallow anyone. At the end of this long straight, a slightly more gentle turn left will lead to the next segment. It starts on grass on a small clearing before reverting to (firm) hard path. The path then continues and it is really the only long segment that is mildly winding, with some gentle turns with fields on one side and bush on the other. So you cannot see the far away turning pin point for a little while.

Eventually, though, you will reach it. Turn around the cone of doom again and run it all again the other way. Until you meet that weirdly positioned marshal, who shows you how important he is now. Don’t keep going, turn right here! You will be running parallel to the initial field and keep going further for a little while. Until you reach what? Another cone, for another 180-degrees turnaround point. So go around the second to last cone and keep going back until roughly half way, when you turn 90-degrees left again.

Now you will be running towards the first field and then parallel to it until you reach the corner on the side where the start line was. Turn right and head towards the mansion house until you are near the start line. Now another turn and start heading towards the funnel. At this point, remember I had said the course designers were not as sadistic as other teams? Well, I was not fully right it seems. Because at this point you have to run BY the funnel, pass it and turn left once more to go through a last, short out and back. Run by the gardens, turn around, run the same direction on the inner courtyard side and then climb a mini hill.

Now you can enter the finish funnel, around 300m later than you thought you had reached it.

Congratulations on completing Oaklands College parkrun!

Facilities at Oaklands College parkrun

Oaklands College parkrun takes place in a multi-purpose campus that looks very new and well maintained. Besides education, the focus here seems to be sports and some educational farming/husbandry. There are plenty of people using the grounds on parkrunday, while facilities housed by the main buildings appear to be closed.

Toilets are about 3/4 minutes walk away from the meeting point and are open before the event. Walk towards the garden area, then turn right towards one of the main buildings.

As far as parkbreakfast, there isn’t a proper (open) cafe, but you can use a cafe truck and a grilled food stand. They are both past the squat green building you can see to the right of the meeting point, if you are facing the mansion house. As food trucks go, they are both good, efficient and offer decent variety. If not quality, at least for sweet options at the cafe truck.

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 Oaklands College parkrun, I ordered an pain au chocolat, a Diet Coke and a single espresso. This cost me £4.5. Honest price for the convenience of having drinks and some food near the event, but the pain au chocolat was nothing pretty much what you can get packaged in a supermarket.

Oaklands College 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

Oaklands College parkrun is a great new addition to the parkrun family. There aren’t many obvious benchmarks around the course, but the campus has a grand, tidy feel to it and I truly enjoyed running through it. I think this is a course that will truly shine in late spring, with good light, firm ground and dark green views.

It’s far, so I don’t know if I will come back, but this is definitely an event that could give me the motivation to come back.

Finally, obviously, thank you, Oaklands College parkrun team for your hospitality! See you soon, hopefully.