Well, i’m very happy to report that my second attempt at running the Finsbury Park parkrun wasn’t hindered by no parking. In fact i realised that the last time i tried i didnt actually go into the park itself, where there is free parking until i think 10! What an idiot i was!
This run was really eye opening for me as it was quite hilly, so it was testing both my knees and my fitness at the same time. Up until now i have really kept my pace very low as although i haven’t had any knee problems so far (the reason i stopped running was because of a knee operation where both the physio and surgeon said i shouldn’t run again – red rag to a bull for me!) i am really scared that something could suddenly set me back to where i was a year ago…. vulnerable and painful.
Let me give you a bit of history……. I had an operation on my right knee on 3rd May 2013 to remove some of my lateral meniscus, a cartilage pad that is an integral part of the function of the knee joint, and to repair a large crater in the joint surface that went all the way down to the bone, called an osteochondral defect.
The surgery was a success, but then my other knee started to hurt, preventing me from starting to run again. So i had an MRI on the left knee. This showed significant osteoarthritis, meniscal tears and other things that made this knee look substantially worse than the right one had been before i had the op.
Through rest, rehabilitation exercises, and a bit of yoga, I managed to get to the point in the middle of last year that i could start running again at a very low level. As i said earlier, I’ve kept the pace at lower even than slow marathon training pace during the parkruns, and meanwhile in the gym i have started to up the pace a bit, which feels sooooooo good.
We’ll see what happens in the next few months, but the plan is to get to a point where i feel like i’m actually running again – you know, the feeling that you can run for as long as you want, as hard as you want (although of course if you do run hard and long you will end up injured, so its best to just feel the feeling, reign it in, and keep it at that!)
Now back to the Finsbury park experience. It’s one of my local parks, being a Norf Londoner an’ all. Finsbury Park was one of the first of the great London parks of the Victorian era.
It sits in the London Borough of Haringey.
The park has a mix of open ground, formal gardens, avenues of mature trees and an arboretum. There is also a lake, a children’s play area, a cafe and an art exhibition space. Sports facilities in the park include football pitches, a bowling green, a skatepark (small but fun!), an athletics stadium, and tennis and basketball courts. The lovely Heathside running club run out of Finsbury Park.
A thing i find interesting about the park is that unusually for London, the park hosts two facilities for “American” sports: an American football field, home to the London Blitz, and diamonds for softball and baseball, home to the London Mets.
Even more oddly, Jimi Hendrix played live in the park in 1967!
The Parkland Walk, a linear park which was a railway, provides a route that links the park with Crouch Hill Park, Crouch End, and Highgate Underground station. If you haven’t run along the parkland walk at least once, i’m afraid you havent lived!
Anyway, I had a lovely run, and came out of it pain free!
Gavin's Blog 