Running the Parks

Run time : 30:25 Distance covered : 3.29 m (5.29km) Soundtrack :   David Tennant's podcast Conditions : sunny, early autumnal  Before I moved to the suburbs and became a boring dad, I used to have a flat in the west end of Glasgow. I still miss the old neighbourhood whenever I come back, particularly when I'm in one of my favourite spots, like the Botanic Gardens. I already knocked off a big chunk of the west end parks on my run back in June. I covered Victoria a couple of weeks ago, and I'm saving Kelvingrove for the big finish, so that left just two west end parks. One I was very familiar with, and one which I had never visited before. The latter was Bingham's Pond. Another park I must have driven by a hundred times without noticing. It's nestled between Great Western Road and Gartnavel General Hospital. Having run so many parks on this project (96 as of today), I've noticed them falling into categories: e.g. Classic Victorian, Uninspiring 60s, Nature Reserve,...

Run time : 35:14 Distance covered : 3.83m (6.16km) Soundtrack : New Yorker Radio Hour podcast Conditions : biblical flood The first thing to say about this run is that it was wet .  Really wet. It started out in heavy rain and got worse. I don't think I've ever run in rain as hard as that.  It was my first single-park run for a while. A lot of the parks are small enough that I've grouped them together on single 5k(ish) runs, but there are still a few big enough to complete the whole run in one park, and this one stretches out for a comfortable fifty acres.  Victoria Park is one of the parks I was more familiar with. I used to play basketball on the courts in what I remember as glorious long, hot summers in the 90s. It was one of the few parks with outdoor courts back then, so the park was like a magnet, drawing all of the people independent-minded enough to play a sport other than football from ...