New Burgess parkrun route

Southwark's Burgess Park hosts one of my favourite parkruns, scene of my PB and recognised as being one of the flatter and faster courses in the London area. I've written about it here before, but recently there has been a change to the course. I went along and ran it yesterday, chasing my second sub-20 5k in three days after a good outing in the Assembly League race in Battersea Park on the preceding Thursday. I didn't make it, but can confirm this is still a good course if you are looking for a fast 5k time.

 

 

As before the course starts at the far west of the park near the Camberwell Road entrance, and heads off for a long straight before taking a turn and looping around the Burgess Park lake. The main change is that the old course used to go twice round the lake- nice and picturesque (what with its herons and all), but sometimes resulting in congestion as there would be a lot of lapping around the lake.  The new course only goes round the lake once before heading up to the far east of the park by the Trafalgar Avenue entrance.

 

runners on the home stretch with the Aylesbury Estate in the background

There is a slowing hairpin turn there,  but once negotiated it's a long straight run (I think about 1.2k) from one end of the park to the other. Mentally it's quite tough, as it does seem quite a stretch, but there is nothing to slow momentum other than going down then up through the underpass that takes the path under the road at Wells Way.

 

 

At the very end there is a sharp left turn towards the finish funnel on the grass, other than that it's tarmac all the way. The finishing line is actually within the funnel by the flag, so as the sign says make sure you 'run all the all way to the flag'. Friendly crowd and team as always, they have fresh fruit at the end for a donation.

 

 

 Kent AC's Gareth Anderson was first man home yesterday in 16:48,  Amy Cook first woman in 21:04, with a total of 286 finishers.

 

Strava of my run

Burgess parkrun page 

 

Running with Herons

My pleasant London Sunday long run yesterday included heading up to the Tower of London to watch cyclists go by in their thousands in the RideLondon-Surrey 100 mile event. As well as enjoying the spectacle, associated road closures meant that Tower Bridge was devoid of traffic and I was able to run across it in the middle of the road like it was mile 12  of the London Marathon all over again.

Heading home I passed through Burgess Park, where by the lake a grey heron was casually strolling along the path not in the slightest bit bothered by runners heading past. As the lake is on the Saturday parkrun route I can only assume that the wildlife there has grown accustomed to the sight of legs and Lycra! 

Heron on Burgess Park lake

On another run last week from St Katherine's Dock to Shadwell Basin I also saw a couple of herons calmly wading in the water as frantic humans packed a few km into their lunch breaks. I can't help thinking that they are conveying some taoist message about effortless grace.

What is the fastest parkrun in SE London? And how much difference does the course make?

All parkruns are equal but some are more equal than others... yes they're all 5k distance (more or less ;-)) but anyone who has run more than one knows that some courses are faster. There are various reasons, such as the terrain (tarmac is generally faster than trail) and how many slowing twists and turns there are, but obviously the main factor is hills. Up hill sections slow most of us down, and even  if we go hard down hill it is rarely enough to make up the time lost on the ascent.

Still, hilly courses are excellent training and for some its enough of a challenge  to just compare times week in week out over the same course. My home parkrun at Hilly Fields is one of the hillier in London, as the name suggests, and I have run it 73 times. But sometimes its good to see how fast you can go on the flat, and if you are chasing a target time it obviously makes sense to seek out a faster course now and then.

But can we quantify how much difference a course makes? Clearly it partly depends on the individual. If you are very strong on hills, then of course you might not notice as much a difference in time when moving on to a flatter course. If, on the other hand,  you can barely keep going up hill you are likely to benefit more when there's less hill to deal with.

Making more general comparisons is more complicated than it seems, as I found when looking at runs in the South East London area (with Mile End across the river also included as it's one of my nearest parkruns as the crow flies). One obvious measure is the average run time which the parkrun website gives for each run. I assume that by average, parkrun refer to the mean. This is calculated from aggregating all the run times from an event and dividing them by the number of runs - in the case of Hilly Fields currently over 15,000.

In my area that makes the flat tarmac course at Dulwich the fastest, more than two minutes faster than the hills of Hilly Fields and Greenwich's Avery Hill Park course.Still I was surprised to see Brockwell Park coming in second fastest when it is certainly much hillier than the pretty flat Southwark, Burgess and Peckham Rye courses. Average times might be affected by various other factors though - perhaps some courses attract more, faster club runners which lift the average while others might have larger, more inclusive fields with a higher proportion of slower runners. Dulwich parkrun has a strong association with Dulwich Runners, Brockwell Park is home to Windrush Tri club, Hilly Fields is close to Kent AC's track, whereas Burgess parkrun has no nearby club - does that affect its times? It's important to recognise that what's being measured here is not how fast the course is as such, but how fast the people running it are. There is a relationship between the two - even the fastest runners run more slowly on tougher courses - but some parkruns seem to have faster fields (i.e. more generally faster runners)

Another way of looking at the average is the median time - that is the time of the runner who finished half way down the field. I would have thought that would ameliorate the 'club runner effect', as the times of the faster runners don't affect the average in the same way. As I don't have access to all the data for parkruns ever, I have just calculated this for all runs last week, that is 25 Jul 2015:

On the median measure, Greenwich still appears to be the toughest course. Southwark Park is now the fastest, with Dulwich slipping into second. Burgess is now faster than Brockwell Park which I would expect. But I certainly don't believe that Hilly Fields is faster than Peckham Rye - there must have just been a faster field at Hilly Fields that day.

Course records

So how do the faster runners compare? What about the course records? Well Bromley comes out fastest for both men and women, with Dulwich and Brockwell Park in the fastest four for both. But course records can sometimes just reflect that a top runner turned up one day. Hilly Fields certainly wouldn't be seen as faster than Burgess Park by most runners, but the fastest male time at the former is 22 seconds ahead of the latter, set on Christmas Day 2014 by team GB mountain runner Shaun Dixon (mind you Burgess record holder Max Nicholls is a junior Team GB mountain runner who could probably also get a good time at Hilly Fields).

More instructive is comparing course records set by individuals at different courses. Kent AC's Amy Clements' has the records at both Dulwich and Hilly Fields, the former 1:18 faster. That's in line with the gap in average times between the two. But  this year's Manchester Marathon winner Paul Martelletti holds records at Mile End and Southwark Park- is the former really faster, or was he just taking it a bit easier in Southwark that day?

To exclude the 'anomolous super-speedy visitor effect', I've also looked at averaging the last ten fastest finish times at the events. Dulwich and Mile End are in the top three for men and women, Hilly Fields and Greenwich in the bottom three.

Not sure what to conclude from all this - on most measures Hilly Fields and Greenwich are at the slower end, and Dulwich is clearly one of the fastest. But how much difference it makes depends of how you measure it, and of course on the individual. Burgess Park is definitely the fastest for me, my PB there (19:42) is 92 seconds faster than for Hilly Fields PB (21:14), with my fastest times for Dulwich, Southwark Park and Peckham Rye somewhere in between. So I'm surprised that Burgess doesn't figure higher up the speed tables - maybe it just needs some faster runners to run there!

[updated 1 August with median times; all statistics as of 4 July 2015 unless otherwise stated]

Running London (7): Burgess Park

I ran for my second time in Burgess Park parkrun yesterday, joining 128 runners on a 5k around the London Borough of Southwark park. The park, which is bordered by Camberwell, Walworth, north Peckham and the Old Kent Road, is one of the largest in inner London.

The course is flat and fast (I got a PB), on tarmac throughout, starting off with a long stretch that follows the line of the now vanished Grand Surrey Canal under the 'bridge to nowhere' (a relic of the canal period, it looks good but you can't actually get on it as the stairways are blocked).

The parkrun route then features two circuits of the picturesque lake, with its swans, geese and ducks. before heading back to the finish.

Unlike many London parks, Burgess Park is not a surviving patch of former country-side but a post-World War Two creation on land that was previously covered in dense housing and industrial sites - some of the rubble remains on site under the park's landscaped features. Laid out incrementally between the 1950s and 1980s, in the past few years it has undergone major renovation, with features including an expanded lake, a new children's play area and a BMX track. 

I worked on a project on the neighbouring Aylesbury Estate in the early noughties and at the time a major concern was that the park was under-used by local people. There was even a proposal to drain the lake and build a secondary school there. Today the park is very busy, especially in the summer, with big groups of friends and families having barbeques and lots of informal football games. Oh and a 100+ people running round it every Saturday morning. As well as parkrun, Burgess Park sometimes hosts other running events - earlier this month for instance Southwark Schools Team Road Running Championships took place there. 

Burgess parkrun starts at 9 am every Saturday morning at the Camberwell Road end of the park, not far from the tennis centre. Lots of buses stop next to the park on Camberwell Road or Albany Road, including the 12, 35, 40, 42, 45, 68, 148, 171, 176 & 468.  

(photos of finish at Burgess parkrun taken February 22 2014, other photos of park taken in November 2013)

View Burgess parkrun in a larger map

Previously in the Running London series:

Nunhead Cemetery

Hilly Fields

Southwark Park

Richmond Park

Hackney Marshes

Dulwich Park

South London Running News (1): Summer 2013

A round up of running things going on round my way:

Your Pace no Race in Burgess Park

I took part in the 5k parkrun in Burgess Park (Camberwell/Walworth) last week, which like all UK parkruns takes place every Saturday at 9 am. Something slightly different coming up in the park next month though:

'Fancy a running event where no one comes last? Are you new to running and want an achievable goal? Not ready for a 5k or 10k race yet? "Your pace no race" is a running event were no one comes last. You can choose from two, three or four kilometre runs, with no timer, no top three prizes and no race numbers. Just you, your challenge distance and a fun, friendly, no pressure event.

Sunday 22 September 2013, 11am to 1pm. £5 entry for all distances Register on the day and arrive by 10.15am to pay and sign in. Free tshirt for all participant All events are wheelchair and pram friendly.

Southwark Park

Meanwhile elsewhere in Southwark, Rotherhithe's Southwark Park is re-emerging as a running venue with a new parkrun starting there on Saturday September 7th. I went for a run there today, nice flat course with tarmac path so should be good for those chasing a 5k PB.

This month London City Runners have started a weekly Thursday training night in the park (7 pm start) , using the nearby Seven Islands Leisure Centre to leave belongings. London City Runners was established in 2010 and has quickly grown to over 2000 members. The club currently train twice a week from Bermondsey Square, but due to restrictive space have been looking to expand the number of sessions they offer each week.

There's also a 10k fun run in the park on 12 October. Details from Southwark's RUN! London Activator David White (david.white@southwark.gov.uk)

Other Parkrun News

Bromley Parkrun are celebrating their 4th birthday on 31st August 2013, and will be running their usual course backwards - that is running in the opposite direction to normal, not actually running backwards!

My home Hillyfields Parkrun in Lewisham will be having its first birthday on 14th September with cake and prizes. They will also be reversing their normal direction so those dreaded uphill stretches will now be a doddle, and those downward slopes... well you do the math. Check their facebook page for updates on what's planned..

Athletic Clubs

There's lots of running clubs locally, most of which cater for all levels from beginners to elite runners (including in some cases international athletes). South London Clubs include:

- Croydon Harriers - based in South Norwood.
- Kent Athletic Club - based in Ladywell/Lewisham
- Dulwich Runners - have a 10k charity run coming up on 6th October, starting and finishing in Dulwich Park.
- Dulwich Park Runners
- Herne Hill Harriers - actually based in Tooting Bec, not Herne Hill.
- Beckenham Running Club
- Blackheath and Bromley Harriers
- Petts Wood Runners
- London City Runners. (see above)
- Clapham Runners
- South London Harriers - based in Coulsden, but also training at Crystal Palace
- Cambridge Harriers - based in Bexley, also train in Eltham