The Running Channel Southend parkrun

Missed the obvious Horton parkrun in Bradford. Has a negative total gradient, 3 uphills and 4 downhills on the 3 and a half laps. Overall probably negative 30 metres, quite easy to get a PB.

walmer and deal seafront DEAD flat

@Caleb Deakin mine is 21:42

@Caleb Deakin at pegwell bay

Haha! Ummm, no, that’s cheating!

I've run Victoria Dock and Hackney Marshes and they would be faster still without the dead turns. You can't see it in this video but there is a marshall at each turn point so you can't really turn early :)

@@TimGrose I was wondering why there wasn't a cone to turn around.

And it’s not a race, so not only are you cheating yourself, you would be lying to other people 😬

Awesome!! So glad you feature in it too 🙌

ma1nyy that’s my local I would say Hartlepool is quicker though

Albert park course record is 14 mins 29 secs. I'm a regular runner here which only has 1 minor incline.Hartlepool course record is 15 mins 26 secs. I know it's a long out and back along the sea front (wind permitting) towards Seaton Carew.

I was there!! he beat Matty Hynes record by a second 😆, I was about to start my final lap of the park and he was just finishing.

Great idea! Watch this space.

Don’t worry, these are ‘fastest’, not ‘easiest’ - it’s all relative 👍🏼

✈️

Awesome! We love the parkrun vibe

@@runningchannel 👍 I run it with my teacher, my friend and her dad. Dont judge 😂

For sure, or maybe the 10th or 25th percentile would be even better... but you can't pull those stats off the parkrun website!

I'd just measure absolute number under 20mins

Fulham palace is tough but rly nice

It's in the top 10! 9th fastest in the UK to be precise. So just missed out on the top 5.

Sounds nice!

Dudley is excellent but not all that fast I'd have said, with a steepish incline at one point.

Is that the one one of the Brownlee brothers has the course record at? 🤔

@@runningchannel no that was in York itself at the racecourse. Jonny Brownlee held the record, but it's since been broken

main problem at LE is some pinch points and a congested start. But yes, its a quick one all right. #

I think Long Eaton is faster than no 2 which has 2 turn around points and narrow. At Long Eaton you don't have to slow down at all for any turns, it is wide smooth, flat tarmac. It is a bit congested for the first 100m due to the number of people turning up, but start near the front and it's fine

Yet a lot of people seem to get unexpectedly fast times there.

It came out 34th out of nearly 600 so certainly lot quicker than most.

​@@TimGrose From the video here some of the courses look slightly more difficult than Victoria as there was some inclines or sharp turns while Victoria is flat and is 1 mile oval.

tickling Yes, victoria is by far flatter and faster than all of the 5 in the video

@@TimGrose Is there anywhere we can see the complete list? I run a few around where I live now and I reckon Walsall Arboretum Parkrun is the quickest I've done, completely on tarmac, pretty flat, 3 laps, but with some twists and turns, though I love Cannock Chase more!!!

@@mattpotter8725 yeah Walsall is 10th and effectively is more or as fast on average as anything else. The full list I posted in a FB group.

Course profile suggests you run downhill for the first mile but don't come back up again. So I figured that this is a likely reason why it comes out fast. Have you run many other parkruns to compare?

@@TimGrose there is technically more down than up but there are 2 big hills as its laps!

Sounds fast!

Do you think you’ll try it one day?

The Running Channel I think so. I can’t imagine attempting any parkrun tourism here, though. There are only four in the entire state of Florida. There’s the one that’s here in the Orlando area (albeit on the opposite side of the metro area from me). Two of them are about 2-1/2 hours drive from my house, and the other is about a 7 hour drive (at that point, I think a flight is looking like a better option).

The Running Channel for scale, the State of Florida is a bit larger in land area than England and Wales combined.

Let us know how you get on in the other four! Check out our toughest video too - some for the list there 👍

I can't believe Eden Project is really within the top 5 fastest, with the amount of climbing plus the very twisty turny nature of the course.

Hey there! 🤓

Might be worth a visit 👍

One of my park runs... Definitely a fast park run 😁

Yes I was quick there despite heavy rain.

Yes came out 19th so well up there on the speedy stakes.

Good to know!

Exmouth came out 22nd so certainly is speedy. Imagine some weeks a strong sea breeze might slow things?

I’ve done many Worthing parkruns too

Interestingly the Isabel Trail one is 130th fastest out of 580!

Isabel trail isnt flat, altho relative to the rest of Staffordshire its not too bad. The elevation profile is surprising

Thanks! We have been along to Burgess Park before. Anna’s volunteered there as tailwalker in fact 🙌 We’ll be back!!

Yeah agree there on both fast. In fact Dulwich missed this by a single place and Burgess came out 12th.

Yeah Aberbeeg came out 8th and the difference between places often amounts to less than a second.

Kenn Kenny some tough hills though! Do ellenbrook fields or cassiobury round there for a fast one!

parkrun tourism goals 🙌

According to the date used to measure the parkruns, Cardiff is 68th fastest out of 580!

Nope doesnt beat Victoria Belfast with average run time 27:46

@@one2escape Ohh no! That's hard to beat! lol

It isn't done on average, and anyway since Parkrun isn't a race many people turn up just to keep fit on a Saturday morning and if the majority of people do this then the average will suffer. So average doesn't matter. Even fastest time doesn't matter as Mo Farah could hold the record on one Parkrun, whilst it's just a club runner on another which doesn't mean the one Mo ran is the fastest.

@@mattpotter8725 Ohh yeah agree with you, and the local terrain is an important factor as well. Although I still think only a certain type of people will join Parkrun no matter where, not the majority of people, definitely not Mo Farah lol

​@@peterc66 The majority of the people at all the parkruns I go to aren't particularly fast runners, most are doing it as a way to get fitter, some because they are overweight or unfit and want to make themselves healthier. Last Saturday I ran a parkrun that had 3 laps of a course and being not the fastest, but not the slowest (my PB is 21 min 30) I lapped many people. There were groups of people running together who I lapped so the vast majority of people are not running club members who can post times that are equivalent or better than my time. I've also on occasion turned up late at a parkrun, I have to drive about 20 minutes to get to my nearest one, and so I can see what the majority of the runners are, becuse I've battled my way through them to get to an above average position, getting stuck behind groups at certain pinch points. Now I'm not saying these are definitive evidence of every parkrun, but this is my point - if one parkrun that is really fast (flat, tarmac, no sharp turns) has a lot more runners that aren't particularly fast then by looking at average time isn't a great indicator of how fast that parkrun course is. From the parkruns I've done I can judge how easy or hard a certain course is by the amount of effort I had to put in. I see parkrun as a great start to a Saturday morning, good exercise where I can push myself to my limit, maybe get pulled along by faster runners. It's not about finishing as high up as I can, as if a bus load of parkrun tourists that run for team GB just happened to turn up that week, or even a whole bunch of local running club runners turn up en masse then I'm going to finish with a lower finishing position than a week where this isn't the case, and therein lies my point. If you can't judge on average time or fastest time you have to try to compare by looking at people who have run multiple parkruns within a short timeframe of each other and compare their times, or somehow identify people who have very similar abilities, probably by them getting similar times at the same parkrun and then you can kind of do some clever seven points of separation kind of algorithm and compare different parkrun courses and their difficulty that way. But just comparing them in isolation based on times is very prone to error.

Wow, well done Jacquie, that's great!

Thx

Can't wait to do this too!

Which one? I used to do the Ally Pally one and that usually had 2 times up a very steep hill between two of the levels, but I think there are harder.

Penrose came out 33rd so certainly quick too. Eden was a bit of a surprise but just how the numbers come out. I understand the first mile is straight downhill which must help getting your speed up?

@@TimGrose Yep, a friend quite right called the 1st mile a 'free mile' lap 2/3 has a hard hill, but fast downhill again to help for that pb

Thanks! We’ll check it out.

Wow that's impressive!

Perth, Strathclyde and Edinburgh are all quick.

Gregory Bailey ah I did Kirkcaldy the other Saturday that seemed quite a lot quicker than anything I’d done before, not flat but rolling !

That’s not what we based the list on. This is based on the SSS - more deets in the description 👌 technically, based on what you’re saying, Bushy Park, where Andy set the parkrun record, would be the fastest 👍(Anna)

This is true. But the list isn’t done based on the fastest ever finish times. It’s based on the course and a number of other different features

True. Dulwich is the one I expected to be in there

Yes I also expected to see Dulwich which was the fastest UK parkrun until VD started. I suppose they couldn't have the entire video London-based. Bushy is also fast as is Fulham Palace. Many of the quickest parkrun courses are in London.

11th place!! So *just* outside the top 10 fastest. Almost there but not quite!

Stretford is far too busy these days to be considered fast. Still a great course though! 👍🏻

Too many hills here though you have a few like Heslington, Hull, Long Eaton.

Dulwich was just outside the top 5 in 6th place!

@@runningchannel Having seen Hackney Marshes and Victoria Dock I think I will pass considering the sharp hairpin turns. I find they disrupt your rhythm significantly

Have a look here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pbJ2h9yryrmaf2Q.html 👍

Hey Adrien. We’ve put the info in the description about the SSS scores and how they’re worked out - hope that helps! (Anna)

Ten 😳

@@runningchannel It's a 3 lap course with the last lap going into a woodland uphill area.

alexander is a perculiar PR, doesnt look hard at all but god something happens at 3km in and my body turns into a flooded sponge . . really odd. only park run that does it

@@runnerfive972 my PB is 18:55 at the moment, so want to try an easier one to try and beat it.

Also Edinburgh is fast too no mention

All good shouts. Walsall Arboretum is 10th fastest. Swansea Bay is 13th. Cardiff is actually in 68th place! And Edinburgh is 125th! There’s not a lot in it between each position. And you’ve got to remember, there are almost 600 events in the UK alone!

it was the Bushy Park parkrun, near Richmond SW London.