Dereham parkrun

Dereham parkrun

On the 13th June 2026 I ran the Dereham parkrun which was the 99th event held at the venue, my 292nd parkrun and 204th different course I'd attended.

Dereham parkrun isn't exactly around the corner and with a 2 hour and 15 minutes drive ahead of me I questioned my life choices more than once whilst turning off my alarm clock at 5:45. 

I've debated the pros and cons of traveling distances to get to parkrun on these pages before and have attempted to ease my guilty conscience by combining it with trips to football.

That could almost be true with my trip to Dereham, afterall the event parking is located at Dereham Town Football club who play in the Eastern Counties Premier League Division (Step 5). I even entered the stadium both before and after parkrun to use the toilet although I can't claim a stadium visit on the basis that no football took place.

Sadly I couldn't really see much of the ground as it was surrounded by fencing, and was surrounded on each side by small terraced and modest stands of various sizes befitting the level.

Behind the stadium likes countryside and plenty of it being on the far eastern end of Dereham town itself. The parkrun route is accessible via a pathway that leads to the fields behind the ground, with a modern new housing estate on the other side of the path.

I joined the welcome meeting as a first timer and the volunteer who was leading the talk asked everyone in turn where they were coming from. One couple said Kent without detailing whereabouts in Kent they were from. Others were more local, one was from Huddersfield and another from Macclesfield and then I said myself as Gravesend and nodded politely at the couple from Kent opposite. The man behind me also spoke and he took was from Gravesend.

Neither of us knew one another, but we'd both travelled 2 hours and 15 minutes to attend the event for completely different purposes. Or at least I assume we did as he'd walked off after the meeting had finished and I never got an opportunity to talk to him again.

The course itself was a two lap affair. One small lap, one longer lap which takes in the first and a little squiggly shoelace style now at the end. It was a multi-terrain course on a mixture of trail paths, grass and more established woodland paths.

Lap one takes you around the bottom half of the farmers field, with part of the perimeter through the woods. The second lap takes you around the entirety of the field with more woodland trails on the opposite side of the field to the first

We were warned about the woodland trails beforehand to be careful of tree roots. Despite the warnings and advice I got bitten. Half way around the second lap I twisted my ankle, hearing a snap of something in the process. I managed to keep going, hobbling briefly for a few seconds before trying to run it off and get to the end.

I was feeling good and strong before I'd twisted my ankle so was desperate to keep up the pace and get to the end. Whilst keeping the same speed wasn't quite possible I did manage to get to the finish line.

I finished in 75th place out of a field of 171 participants in a time of 29:51. Despite the accident I'd managed to get my second fastest time of the year which I'd been working on for a couple of weeks so was good to see the work pay off.

Driving an automatic does have it's benefits, but driving home resting a dodgy left ankle is probably one of the better ones. At home, I took off my shoes and socks and you could see my ankle was already bruised and swollen. A bad sprain for sure, but luckily not broken.

A week of RICE and hopefully it will be back again next week for more of the same!

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