Tropical Parkrunning

Glad that's over! 

Running In Kuala Lumpur is interesting! The 19th Taman Pudu Ulu parkrun Facebook page told us that the event was in danger of being cancelled due to air quality issues, we subsequently found out that this is due to smoke drifting over from other parts of Malaysia - the result of the annual burning of paddy fields. We arrived the night before and were up at six to catch a Grabcab (the local version of Uber) - the air seemed clear (and warm and sticky). This parkrun was set up by Harry, a Malaysian who had come across parkrun during his time as a student in Cardiff. Already he's got together a great team of helpers and the 100 plus runners consisted of a mix of locals, ex-pats and tourists. The run duly went ahead, I can only describe it as running through treacle in a hot shower so I was surprised with a time of 22:42 in 11th place. Vicky was also first in her age group with 35:11. We joined the organisers and other runners (including a chap who had just completed a parkrun world tour (i.e. managed to complete events in all countries where parkrun takes place) for a Malay breakfast - a roti bread with egg cooked in it - was actually pretty good.

Ready for launch?

KL as Kuala Lumpur is known by many of the locals, is a real mix of poverty and opulence. It's home to the Petronas Towers which were the tallest buildings in the world for a number of years. Seeing this close up at night is quite something - fairly close by but not easy to find was the Taps bar which had a selection of craft beer from all around the world - mostly very strong and at hugely inflated prices - I think they need a bit of competition to stop this nonsense. We had a quick drop of their lightest on offer. We did much prefer the ambience of the Coliseum Cafe, a colonial relic now surrounded by a street full of Indian department stores and malls. This was where the plantation owners hobnobbed and drank their G and T's. We settled for a reasonably priced Carlsberg. We quaffed our beer and speculated that the word 'malaise' must have originated here in this hot humid climate. (Only later did I sadly see that 'malaise' is derived from the French!)

What Ho chaps - ready for a snifter?

Soweto

No cats on these hot tin roofs. (Rooves?)

Yes it does look like this - in parts. Soweto's name comes from the abbreviation of South West Township and originally it was mostly a disorganised slum-like township where migrant workers lived. Several miles out of the centre of Johannesburg, it's grown somewhat and now contains around a million and a half people, not all living in shanty towns like this. In fact we saw some quite upmarket homes and there are some very wealthy people living there. Our party of six in a minibus were taken on a five hour tour to see some unforgettable sights. As we entered the township we were driven past the largest hospital in the Southern hemisphere - this is the Chris Hani Bardgwanath Hospital which has 3,500 beds, our driver drily noted that they are experts at treating gunshot wounds! (We also drove past what must be the biggest taxi rank in the world which was opposite the hospital.) But back to the poverty, we were taken into Kliptown, an area where 45,000 people live in tin shacks with no sewerage system, no pavements, no infrastructure to talk about. Despite this the inhabitants try their best and we were taken to a pre-school where the infants, all in uniform, crowded around us to say hell and click their thumbs with us. We were glad we were there in Joburg's winter - in summer it must be diabolical - think flies and smells! However less than a mile away is a huge shopping mall with supermarkets, upmarket clothes stores and restaurants.

The decommissioned Soweto power station - full of beer now!

Lunch time beckoned and our driver took us to a brewery - another surprise, the Soweto Brewery, billed as a craft brewery which employs female brewers (in the African tradition) the place we went to was the Ubuntu Kraal brewery styled as an African village/wedding venue/etc. The 'craft' beers, an IPA, a stout plus others flavoured with cherry, ginger are brewed on site but one of the employees quietly told me that the flagship lager Soweto Gold is brewed by Heineken who now own the whole shebang. In any case we had nice 'Braai' barbecue and a taster of the ales.

Soweto is full of contrasts but it also epitomises the confusion and concerns about the future of South Africa. It's still a violent place and although the majority of killings are black on black an increasing number of white farmers are being murdered and are having their land taken away from them al la Zimbabwe. Corruption, crime and general misrule is the norm. Here's a picture is of a power supply being pirated - we saw a lot of this on Soweto, the electricity supplier ESKOM is bankrupt and this isn't helping. So Soweto is worth a visit - it's eyeopening in fact and there's even a parkrun although I'm not sure how we'd manage it!

Going for a 'U'

My first parkrun in Africa - we were down on the coast south of Durban running through the forest surrounding the Umdoni Golf Club. My Strava took a while to get used to working in the southern hemisphere - looking at the Strava trace you can see it's all over the pace for the first k! We now just have J, V and Z to bag - there's no X - we seemed to have picked up most of the letters of the alphabet without trying but clearly a bit more planning is required to cross of the last few letters and become 'parkrun alphabeteers'. This was a wonderful course which involved some wide trails interspersed with narrow wiggly tracks through the forest.

Phew - you're heavy!

And here's me emerging from one of the wiggly bits bringing up the rear behind Tania and Siena who, together with various other in-laws and relatives, gamely got up early and joined us in the parkrun. The bonus that everyone was looking forward to was a well earned breakfast at the Umdoni Golf Club for which Tania very kindly stood the bill. Vicky had a great run and really enjoyed this off road course - no wild creatures encountered en route (but see below) - her time was 33:58 and she was first of 9 in her age group. A young lad nipped past me at the uphill finish and I had to settle for 4th overall in 23:19 - astonishing that I nicked the V65 record by one second! Parkrun is incredibly popular in South Africa - one of reasons being that a leading health insurer awards points to its members for completing parkruns - there were 140 runners here but just up the coast in Durban the North Beach parkrun has had well over 2000 runners at various times!

Who are you looking at?

Pardon the fuzzy photo but this was taken from the car window on our way out of the golf club. This seems to be a rare white springbok who wandered past unconcerned as we bounced around on the dirt track. Apparently this is a colour mutation rather than an albino animal but it was still a rare treat to see one of these fine creatures.  Lots of other wild life to be seen down here on the coast including the magnificent African Fish Eagle which we saw plunging down in the breakers to catch its prey and other birds new to us including the bright Yellow Weaver and the secretive Mocking Cliff Chaff which I spotted out of the corner of my eye under a bush - what eagle eyes I have!

Ireland and Wales on the run

And beer seller!

A rerun for me of Queen's parkrun in Belfast. The night before we'd considered walking to meet our George and Fiona at Bob Stewart's for a nice meal but changed our mind and caught a cab - thank goodness we did as it was a long two miles drive and we'd have suffered at the parkrun. I finished in 23:13 which was down a couple of minutes or so on three years ago but I'm still in recovery mode - Vicky enjoyed her run in 33:49 and still looked sprightly on our walk round Castlewellan park in the afternoon. A surprise for us was the sign which announced the walk@castlewellanparkrun which is alternative to the couch to 5K movement which has brought so any people into parkunning.

Can we all have one?

The following week we found ourselves up early on our way to Anglesey listening to Tony Blackburn playing 'Sounds of the Sixties'. This time he came up with a gem that we'd not heard before by The Supremes - who remembers 'Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine'? Admittedly not one of Diana Ross's best but the title alone should have ensured success - what went wrong? Perhaps the film failed to inspire! Of course we were headed for a parkrun, a fairly new event this was the Newborough Forest parkrun which threads through the pine forest by the very nice beach at Newborough. At event number 8 we were joined by fellow outfitter Joe, who was making his parkrun debut - from the start he shot off into the distance finishing in a creditable 12th position. I was 34th in 23:01 and Vicky completed the run with Skip in 32:51. This was a fairly warm humid day but it will be great to run this on a cold frosty winter's morning (when the tourists are no longer around perhaps!)

Outfit we are!

Three Conwy's and a Henley

Wow that was fun!

After a brief hiatus due to a minor op for me, we resumed our Parkrunning journey. Three more goes at our local run at Conwy saw me bring my time down from a very cagey parkwalk of 48 minutes at the beginning of July to 34:17 and 27:20. Vicky ran with me for much of the parkwalk but I let her get on with it for the rest. We interspersed this with a trip to Henley on Thames - we had to be down south for various reasons and we found a lovely AirBnB place on Friday night near the town centre - our host was a dedicated runner himself but he was reluctant to participate in the local parkrun - not his cup of tea at the moment he said as he was partway through a long distance training programme.

Just made it.

So we tootled up to the venue on a fine warm Saturday morning to find a lovely rural course - plenty of up and down and running through woods - very enjoyable. Despite walking the uphills I managed to sneak under the 30 minute mark with 29:58 and Vicky finished in 35:45. The night before we'd by chance come across the Sam Brown Ukulele Orchestra playing live at the Lovibond Brewery Tap in Henley. Sam Brown is the daughter of singer Joe Brown (remember him and his Bruvvers?) and she was a very good singer performing live at the Albert Hall many times and going on a world tour with Pink Floyd - she was also lead singer with Jools Holland for a few years. All this came to a full stop ten years ago when she lost her voice!

On your marks - go!

Rather than sit around and feel sorry for herself she decided to found her ukulele orchestra - and

here they are - a bunch of people of all ages strumming to their heart's content. Not only that we were able to have a snifter of Lovibond Brewery Ale - Lovibond's was the name of an acquisitive brewer from London who bought the Henley brewery of Ive Brothers in 1961, closed the place down at some point and supplied beer from their brewery in Greenwich, operations ceased in 1959. (The Lovibond name is better known via the colour scale for beer devised by one of the relatives one the brewers.)