Chris Cutforth's Blog

Rother Valley romp I finally made it to   Rother Valley this week for my 60th parkrun. On the journey there in the car I had a flashback to 2011 when I fell off the pavement outside my house and sprained my ankle whilst preparing for the Rother Valley 10k. Fortunately there were no such mishaps this time so I arrived in peak condition ready to take on the challenge.   About 250 runners gathered at the start - a nice touch by the race director to welcome all new park runners (which was greeted by a spontaneous round of applause) and parkrun tourists including one from Aberdeen, another from New Zealand.  Before heading off I chatted with Helen, one of the volunteers, who told me she was taking it easy today recovering from a 24 hour marathon run in Leeds, Mark for whom this was his sixth parkrun in 2 years, and his partner Sarah who was clearly trying to encourage him to participate more regularly!   Rother Valley is a very flat course - a single lap of the beautiful pa

Back in the groove...   This weekend was my first parkrun for quite a while. In fact running has taken rather a back seat for me over the past few weeks due to injury and various work and family commitments.   I decided to take the easy option by toddling off to my local Endcliffe Park event accompanied by my daughter Katie with her new camera.  Numbers were high on a beautiful summers day and it was also Endcliffe's 7 year anniversary which was celebrated with a series of awards to runners and volunteers before the start. My time of 25.57 was a bit on the slow side but I got stuck in traffic on the first lap and the legs felt quite heavy on the second  after such a long layoff.   My parkrun summer goal is to get back under 24.30 - wish me luck...! I have just returned from a 2 week trip to Tanzania and Zambia on behalf of the University during which I met with government and national sports council officials, sport development organisations and universities, as well a