WORCESTER PITCHCROFT PARKRUN Event #264 – Saddles Not Needed!

WORCESTER PITCHCROFT PARKRUN Event #264 – Saddles Not Needed!

Worcester Pitchcroft Parkrun! A parkrun around a racecourse! A great parkrun located close to the centre of Worcester around Worcester Racecourse! This flat parkrun utilises a mixture of gravel and tarmac with small sections of bark and grass! Join me as I provide an in-depth review of the Worcester Pitchcroft Parkrun experience.

Worcester Pitchcroft parkrun is an almost flat course which takes place predominantly on tarmac paths with the notable exceptions of the start and finish sections. It is a one and 3/4 clockwise loops around the outside of Worcester Racecourse, starts on the wide gravel path near the toilet/changing facilities on the East side of Pitchcroft Park. The route heads south towards Swan Theatre for around 500m before a right turn across the racecourse. After crossing the racecourse, turn right again in front of the Grand Stand and follow the tarmac path all the way around towards the start. The course then retraces the first lap past Swan Theatre and over to the Grandstand, but as you run along the side of the river you will be directed across the grass to finish at the north end of the racecourse.

Buggies/prams and dogs are allowed. It’s good to note that there are toilets near the start line and changing facilities. As the route is on a mixture of terrains, trail shoes are recommended, however, road shoes are fine but in the wet weather may potentially be more difficult in the grass and bark section. In terms of how busy the parkrun is, it is a busy one with around 336 attendees, but as the paths are very wide, especially at the start, there are no real problems with congestion. With it being a very flat parkrun, it definitely has the potential for a PB! The racecourse is a nice scenery for a parkrun with the river Severn one side and the racecourse the other.

The atmosphere was great and there were some great volunteers to keep you going! ! This is the 34th parkrun I have recorded of which you can find a playlist of them on my channel!

I will be doing parkruns all over the UK and rest of the world! Every Saturday I take part in a 5K run trying my hardest to get under 20 mins. Worcester Pitchcroft Parkrun is a great run to tick off the “W” on the alphabeteer challenge and it is the second “W” I have done! Let me know if you have ever completed the course. Hope you enjoy the video.

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@SheppeyRuns

If you want more information on the run, you can follow my strava here! https://www.strava.com/athletes/129945136

For more information on Worcester Pitchcroft parkrun you can visit the website:
https://www.parkrun.org.uk/worcesterpitchcroft/

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:30 What is a Parkrun
02:47 Course
04:32 Stats
05:36 Run
18:19 Post Run Summary
20:10 Tips and Tricks
21:37 Post Run Stats
21:58 Outro

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Songs:

Song 1: Olif – Take Off
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://bit.ly/47gZrYF

Song 2: Summer Martin – Summer Lovers
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music
Video Link: https://bit.ly/3R4V3a9

Song 3: Notiluz – New Wave
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://bit.ly/45Zkuhx

Song 4: Trancer – Gunnar Olsen
Music provided by Youtube Audio Library.

Song 5: Sunbalt – Carry
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://bit.ly/3QkXHHa

Song 6: Lichu – Tuvalu
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://bit.ly/3AHjIIQ

Song 7: Hamili – Refresh
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://bit.ly/3Qx6t61

Song 8: Boralys – It Will Be Ok
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music
Video Link: https://bit.ly/46gAICJ

Song 9: Del – Tropical Love (Vlog No Copyright Music)
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-4zY7Ri2Po

This video was originally featured on my main channel @Sheppey10, now reuploaded here as part of my dedicated parkrun archive.

Today is Saturday which means it is park run day and we are off to the Worcester Pitchcraft Park Run. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] So, the location of Worcester Pitchcraft Park Run is to the northwest side of Worcester. So there are two part runs in Worcester. We’ve already done the one on the east side which is just called Worcester park run and today we are doing the one on the northwest side at the Pitchcraft around the Worcester raceourse. So hopefully this should be a pretty flat one, but we’ll have to find out. So today we are attending event number 264. So they’re still going on strong and the course is basically a twolaper around Worcester racecourse on a mixture of gravel paths, tarmac paths. There is a little bit of a grass section at the finish line as well and also where you cross the raceourse is sort of like a barky corky sort of texture as well. So we’ll go into that a little bit later. For this reason, I would probably recommend trail shoes, but road shoes are perfectly fine, especially in dry weather. It is a very pretty course too as it is right next to the river 7 with trees surrounding the racecourse too. And because it is on a racecourse as well, it is very flat. So we’ll take a look at that elevation just a little bit later. With the path being fairly wide, it is perfect for dogs. So it is a dog friendly course and is also buggy/pramm friendly too. So you can definitely bring your children, push them along, and you don’t also have to worry about the toilets as there are some toilets right near to the start line. With it being a flat part run, it is quite a good part run for a PB. The bark section does slowly down ever so slightly I found and also the grass section at the end. But apart from that, it is all hard standing wide paths as well. So you can perform an overtake around anyone pretty easily and you’re not getting stuck at any bottlenecks and especially at the start as well with it being so wide, everyone funnels into position pretty quickly. But before we take a look at the course, if you’ve got this fine, you don’t know what a part run is, is essentially a 5k run by a group of volunteers who both time and marshall the event. You then get given a finish token at the end along with your barcode which you brought with you. You scan both of these and then you’re emailed a finish position and finish time later on. So now you know what a part is. Let’s take a look at a summary of the course. So, as you can see, it is a twolaper around the Worcester racecourse all around the outskirts of that. And it is all completely flat as well with an elevation gain of 0 m and a max elevation of just 15 m. Towards the end, you will cross over that little grass section as well. So, that’s probably one of the small pinch points of this course, but it’s pretty simple one to be honest. So, that is a course summary. And now, let’s have a look a little bit more detail. So you’re going to start off here towards the northern side of the race course next to the toilet block. Going to make your way south. It is a completely straight flat line. You’ve got the choice of either running on the grass or there is the paths on the left hand side as well. You’re then going to turn right at the pitch car park. Now this is where the bark section is. So there’s a little bark section as it crosses the racecourse cuz obviously the horses aren’t going to want tarmac there. You then cross across the central part of the racecourse and then cross another little bit of before turning right next to the stadium. You’re then going to make your way north on complete tarmac paths nice and flat as well around here. Following your way around the perimeter of the river 7 with the trees on either side. You’re then going to go all the way up to the northern side. Do a U sort of turn, but it’s a slow Uturn where the urban fitness is. And then you’re going to make your way all the way back south past the start. do that lap another time, but this time you’re not going to go all the way up to the urban fitness. You’re going to turn right here. This is then all grass. It’s maybe few little bumps and be wary of any rabbit holes and things like that before making your way all the way to the finish funnel which is located here. So, it is a pretty simple course. It’s going to be pretty hard to go wrong. Marshalls are located at all the corners and bends as well, which is perfect. But now that we’ve got a good idea of the course, let’s take a look at some of Worcester Pitchkov Park Run stats. So, the fastest time was set by William Richardson with a time of 14 minutes and 56 seconds, which is insane and probably one of the quickest times I have seen at a park run. The fastest female is Jenny Nesby again with an unbelievable time of 16 minutes and 47 seconds. So, you can definitely see how this one is PB potential. And then the average number of runners is 336. So, a huge volume of runners with an average time, which is again a quite a quick time of 28 minutes and 42 seconds. So, that is the park run stats. And now, let’s take a look at some of my GoPro stats. So, I have now completed 48 part runs with 33 different locations. So, we’re getting very close to that 50 milestone. My best finish position was fourth, which was set in Poland at Zeloni Jar part run. And then my fastest times of Summerdale Pavilion all the way down to Riverfront with a time of 2232 all the way down to 23 minutes and 10 seconds. So that is the time that we’re looking to beat if Worcester Pisscoft wants to get onto that leaderboard. So we made our way towards the start line from where we parked. It was a nice little 10-minute walk up to the start. Then the run director went through a few different milestones, tourists, where people had come from and then went through the course. But we weren’t actually really that ready for them starting because usually they sort of check the run the timers are ready and things like that. The run directory just went 3 2 1 and we were off. So I hadn’t even got my straa going yet. I was getting it all set up ready on my phone. So I was trying to pull it up. You’ll see maybe in the bottom right corner in a second. And there we go. I did just start us off. So as you can see right at the start of the run it is perfect choice of um ground conditions. You can either go on the grass, you can go on the gravel there, or like I did, go on the tarmac on the left hand side. And if it’s it’s quite busy at the start, but there’s plenty of room just to maneuver in and out from different people depending on how fast you want to go. But you can see there in that bottom right hand corner that we have shot off pretty quickly, a lot faster than I usually do. So, it might be pretty difficult to keep up with this pace. But we’re now making our way down towards the south south side of the raceourse. And hopefully it should be a pretty good run. [Music] So, as you can see, it is all been flat so far. And this is where it becomes a little bit more compact, but still really wide paths, so you can’t really complain. You’re not going to uh get taken out by anyone here. And if you want to overtake, you can just slip past people as well. But we’re still going at a very fast pace at the moment of 415ish. So, uh, we need to try and slow it down a little bit, otherwise we’re going to be tired pretty quickly. But again, in this section, you get to choose either stay on the tarmac or go on the right hand side, which is a bit more grally under foot. Maybe if you’ve got road shoes, stick to the left hand side. If you’ve got trail, go to the right, but road shoes would be fine as well. Now, this is where it does cut into a very much smaller paths here. So, you cut off to the right hand side. And this is how big the path is. Probably get three people in a row next to each other. So with the buggy, it’ll be a little bit harder to overtake, but there’s plenty of space in the rest of the course to do that. So pretty quick start. We’ve done half a kilometer, and we’re currently on a time of around 2 minutes and 30 seconds. [Music] So we just coming up towards the bottom end of the raceourse, and this is that first 90° bend. Be careful of that pole in the center, but they have put a cone on there. Thank you to the Marshall, too. This is now the bark crossing that I was on about. And it’s quite spongy. So I actually found it quite difficult to run across this compared to usual. I was putting a little bit more effort in. Followed by a slight little incline there as well as you make it into the center of the raceourse. We’re now going to cross this racecourse over to the other side with another little bit of a bark section and then we’ll be next to the stadium for the raceourse. So this is that second crossing I was on about. This is more astro turf, so a much nicer crossing compared to that first one. A lot harder standing. And we have just hit 1 km there with a time of 4 minutes and 13 seconds. But we are running at a pace of about 440 to 5 minutes now. So we have slowed down for sure pace per kilometer cuz I knew I’d set off pretty quickly though. Now back on that hard standing tarmac. You can see on the left hand side that is where people watch the races from. So it’s pretty nice raceourse. I’ve been to Chenham as well and that also was a stunning raceourse too. But we’re now heading our way back onto path all the way around the rest of the raceourse on this left hand side and down to the leftand side as well is the river 7. So we just coming up to halfway up the western side of the raceourse. You may have noticed a drip on the screen as well on the day. It was a little bit dribbly, drizzly, and it was raining ever so slightly. Maybe got a glimpse of the river 7 on the left there, too. But we’re doing okay at the moment. About 1.4 km in with a time of about 6 minutes 14 seconds. So, pretty quick start. So, if I keep this up, it will be a very good one and potentially a PB sort of run, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, but we’ll have to find out. If you want any information though on the elevation and my pace and all that, I do have Straa. So, you can find that in the link to my in the description. And then also, if you want to go and check out all my other videos, don’t forget to hit the like button and subscribe as well. And I’ve got a full park run playlist with all my different part runs. [Music] So, the course is now going to begin to bend across towards the north. So, it’s a slight curve around, but no difference in terrain. No difference in elevation either. It’s been pretty much 15 to 30 m the whole way. It’s just dropping ever so slightly as we do make our way up towards the northern side of the park run. You can probably go on the grass maybe a little bit if you did want to if it was quite hard on the knees, especially with it being hard standing for the rest of this run. But, we’re doing okay at the moment. 1.8 km in with a time of 8 minutes and 20 seconds. So, we’ll take that every day of the week. But we as can see the pace in the bottom right. We are beginning to speed up again after our second come was a pretty slow one to begin with. 2 km in now. So, that one was slightly slower at a time of 4:34 whereas the first one was 4:13. So, as you see, we did drop off that time a little bit. And the when you go towards the finish line, you will actually turn off to the right hand side here. So you’ll see a cone um which may have just passed a second ago and that’ll direct you in the direction towards the finish where you run over the grass on this right hand side. The grass was fine on the day that we went. Maybe if it was a lot wetter it might be a bit boggier but the day that we went as it been pretty much dry for most of the week it was hard and it was only dribbling today. So that didn’t really affect it. And now we are at that long swooping U-turn which I was talking about in that course description. So we’ve reached the most northern point of this part run and we’re going to start heading south again back towards where we started. You may have seen it just a second ago as well the doggo crossing the path. For some reason most part runs if there’s a dog that’s spectating for some reason they always run out in front of me. I have no idea why. He literally stared me or he or she literally stared me in the eyes then decided to walk out just as I was getting close. I had to give him a quick dodge off to the left. But it’s all good. All the public can use all these paths. So you need to be wary about those sort of things. We’re now heading our way back south which is potentially a little bit of an uphill or incline, but we’ll have to see. And in a few seconds, we’ll see that start line. And so we have pretty much completed the lap. You can see the flag on the right illustrating the start. There on the left is the toilet block. So if you do need the loot, that is where you go. So that is literally just how close it is to the start. Pretty much right there. It has started to rain a little bit more now as you see a few more droplets landing on the camera, but we’re doing quite well. 2.8 km in with a time of 12:47. So, can’t really complain. And we are now heading our way back towards the south side of this racecourse. Hard standing paths still a very very gradual incline I think. And that’s about it. So, not much more to worry about. [Music] 14 minutes and 25 seconds in 3.2 km down and we are beginning to slow. So I would probably recommend to people not to go as quickly as everyone else is cuz of the thrill of everyone sprinting off at the start. I think I maybe started a little bit too quick on this one. So therefore started to struggle once I got to this point and I was uh dropping some few positions here which doesn’t really matter because I was coming back from injury sprain my ankle about four weeks ago. So I’m did one run last week which is a Colby stunning run. Go check that one out. And then we’re doing this one this week just to try and get the ankle back into it. But we were trying to pick up our pace. I thought this one might be a pretty good one to try and get a PB sort of time though. So, I did try and uh do this one as quickly as I could. And with it all being hard standing as well, that was perfect. So, we’re almost back at that southern point. Turning off to the right hand side. On the left here is where we did park in the end. So, really close. Then, it’s just a 10-minute walk up the path we’ve just come down. Be careful again of hitting that pole. Now you’re heading back onto what felt like sinking sand, but it is just bark. It’s quite a spongy thing like I said on that first time round, but it does feel like it slows you down, especially that second lap when you’re beginning to struggle. That little bit of sponge followed by the slight incline straight after does slow you down a lot. And now there’s a bit of a gap building between me and the person in the position ahead of us. But we’re now crossing over on this gravel sort of path now to the other side of the raceourse before we start heading our way back up north. [Music] 4 km down, one kilometer to go. So we got 184 for that kilometer. So hopefully if we speed up just that a little bit more, we could potentially get on the leaderboard. [Music] I haven’t actually been to the Worcester racecourse before, but in and around the grounds and sort of the areas very close by to the Worcester raceourse where they actually do the race for life. They do a dualathlon there as well. So, there’s quite a lot of other events in this area which I do want to give a go. I want to get a bike and start doing a little bit more cycling as well. So, we can give a few cycling competitions a go, but at the moment it is just part runs. I keep injuring myself. So, I’m hoping that I uh can just keep going with these part runs without actually injuring myself anymore. So, I can try and improve my speed so that I can get under that 20 minute mark. But, we’re currently on 4.2 km now, 17 m of elevation. This is a very, very, very gradual downhill. Volunteers there cheering us on as well. So, just need to pick up our pace now if we want to get under that 24 minutes. [Music] As you may have just seen then as well, a cyclist went past on that left hand side. So, like I said before, be wary of the public. You don’t want to run into a bike or anyone else which is using the path. And as I said before, buggies and dogs are allowed. You may have seen the um dog go past us earlier on when we were on the opposite side of the raceourse. But you can see in a few minutes we will be turning off to the right hand side onto the grass and heading towards that finish line. [Music] So, as you may be able to see in the distance on the right hand side, you can see people crossing towards the finish line. So, we are about to turn off to the right onto the grass and then it is a full grass finish. So, here we go. Hopefully, we can start to pick up the pace once we hit this grass section. The volunteer there guiding us into this next bit. There’s the cones as well. And now is that final sprint finish across the grass. The finish line is just a little bit further ahead. For some reason, the GoPro’s gone really dark. I’m not too sure why it’s not adjusted to the change in the lighting yet, but the rain is coming down as well. A little bit more than it was before. The speed has gone up a lot for us. We’re actually catching up with the guy in green here on that right hand side. And we’re currently at a time of 2317. So come on. If we can push that a little bit more, we might be able to get towards 2330. And yes, we do manage to Yes, sorry. We do manage to get a time there of 2327. So that is what we like to see. Just under that 2330 mark and a position of 79th. So, as you can tell, a lot of runners in this course compared to a lot of the other ones. Cuz if I got that time on another course, I probably would be in a much higher position. But yeah, let’s go and have a look at a summary. Worcester pitch coft part run complete. Ticking off that second W on the alphabet challenge. The first W being the plain Worcester park run. So, both of them in the same area, which I have done so far for the W. As you can see though, it is definitely a potential for a PB because I’ve been out with injury. So, I thought I was going to be slower anyway, but I actually did it quite quickly and I was fairly happy with my time. I was just disappointed that I went off that little bit too quickly. I definitely could have paced myself a little bit better. In terms of positioning, you’re not going to get your best positioning at this part run as it is a very, very busy one. But because even though it’s busy, there are no bottlenecks, which doesn’t really affect your time, and that is perfect. In terms of the atmosphere, it did have a really good atmosphere, and running around the raceourse was actually a lot more stunning than I thought it was going to be. is pretty pretty especially around the northern section where you had the river 7 and the trees next to you. Also, after the run, you can go and check Worcester out. It is quite a big city, so there are lots of shops and other things which you can do. But before we do carry on, we’ve got to say a huge thank you to all of the volunteers who were there on the day because without them, the run would not go ahead and therefore Worcester Pitchcraft Park Run would not actually be a thing. So, thank you very much to all of those. They’re all kind, friendly, and cheering us on to motivating me to go that little bit quicker. But as we usually do, we’re going to go through a couple of the pinch points for this park run. And to be honest, there’s not really that many. The only main one, which I would say is a bit of a um pinch point is the crossing, the bark crossing towards the centers, that a little bit spongier, so a little bit more difficult on foot. But apart from that, the 90° bends, they were fine as the paths were so wide. So you weren’t really having to slow down at all at those. And maybe the grass section at the end would be number two. So, I’ll probably give number two to the grass section at the end. That maybe slowed us down just ever so slightly, but apart from that, definitely one for a PB. And if you haven’t seen these part run videos before, we do go through a few tips and tricks for anyone that is thinking of going to the event. So, we’re going to start off with public transport. So, if you want to get there by train, the closest train station to the park run is Worcester forgate street, which is only a 20inut walk to the start. So, pretty ideal location for that. Also, if you want to get the buses, there are a few bus stops which are very close to the start. So, we’ll start off with St. George’s Square, which is a 12minute walk, or Little London, which is a 15-minute walk. So, both of those are nice and close. There is also the Worcester bus station as well if you’re coming from further abroad. And then in terms of parking, there are plenty of city car parks which you can park at. So, I parked at the Pitchcraft car park, which was to 2 hours, it was £160, and that was about a 10-minute walk to the start. There’s also the Moors car park which again up to 2 hours is £160 and a similar sort of distance away. And then there’s the Hive and Cattle Market car park which for 1 hour is £110 or for 2 hours is £210 and that is about 15 minute walk. So it’s slightly further than Pitchcraft but not doesn’t really make too much difference. Then finally if you go for a post park run coffee and cake everyone goes to the Swan Theater which is pretty close to the star. It’s about a 10-minute walk right near to the Pitchcraft car park. So, they are all my tips and tricks for this part run, but if you have any of your own, do make sure to let us know down in that comments and I’ll try and pin your comment up to the top. And now, let’s have a look at my stats after that part run then. So, number of part runs increases to 49 and the number of locations increases to 34. However, everything else stays the same. So, my best finish position still fourth and then my fastest times range from Somerdale Villa down to Riverfront and I was about 17 seconds off knocking Riverfront off the leaderboard. So that is it for Worcester Pitchcraft Park Run. I hope you did all enjoy and if you did, don’t forget to smash that like button and subscribe if you want to see some more of this park runs and I will appreciate it a lot as well. Thank you very much. And also let me know in the comments of where you are attending each week. If you do want to check out last week’s video, we actually went to Colby in South Wales. So we went and attended that one. That one was beautiful. So I definitely recommend going to check that out. Or you can go and check out all my other park runs in the worldwide park run playlist. Next week we are heading off to Oxford as I’m going to truck festival. So on the Saturday we will be doing park run and we’ll be attending the didcop park run. So I hope to see you all there and I hope you all enjoyed and I’ll see you all in the next one.