Let’s just get this out of the way – yes it sounds like I’m talking about your mum going for a trot around the park or a park full of mums – I present Old Deer parkrun or Old Deer Park parkrun or Old Dear parkrun.

HAHAHA YOUR MUM

Anyway, it’s actually the slightly less comical yet more historical Old Deer Park parkrun (remember it’s all one word all lower case or AOWALC).

Originally part of Richmond Palace as a hunting park created in 1604, Old Deer Park is probably now the slightly more functional, less glamorous relative of London’s famous inner wilderness just down the road.

A number of football pitches, a swimming pool and of course rugby because it is South West London, and all within a quick trot from Richmond train station.

Which is actually a little annoying as my train from Putney got me in about half an hour before parkrun started and left me pottering around garages and back alleys for a while.

I’ve been to Old Deer Park a number of times for differing reason – twice at the beginning of the London 2 Brighton Ultra and once for a sporting event shown on a big screen which I have no real recollection of. Given that it is Richmond, I imagine it was rugby.

With 20 minutes until 9am and still nothing to do, I wandered in to the Pools on the Park swimming complex which was a slightly brutalist structure to one side of the park but served its purpose very well for a pre-run wee and also a shelter as the rain decided to absolutely dump on the UK, and very specifically, the park where I was about to run.

With just five minutes to go, I had to step out of the reception and into the pissing rain. It was a proper “we’re over the summer now” rain with no spaces in between to avoid the drenching.

As I popped back round to the start line I’d spotted half an hour ago, there were a lot more people, and one person pointing at various parts of the fields behind and then onto a laminated sheet which would have been destroyed in the weather otherwise. Clearly they were used to this. Or more likely, it’s just the UK in October.

I had no idea what he was pointing at though, which made it even weirder as we first grouped around the race director who was full of enthusiasm despite the weather, and then after a rousing few minutes of speech, we then headed out from the relative shelter of the trees, into the ever increasing rain, and towards a mysterious point about 100m away where the clearly quick ones, turned around and looked at me.

Surely I didn’t look that out of place? And don’t call me Shirley. (one for Deb and doesn’t work as well in text).

Turns out that actually the first lap of three starts by heading towards where we had just come from. So starting very close to the back of the pack, I somehow heard a brief countdown over the noise of incessant rain on jackets before we headed of into the unknown.

And what an unknown it was.

Back towards that twisty bridge that spans the Twickenham Road, before running alongside the road on the grass for a bit before running on a path next to the road for a bit…

But after the initial “why am I doing this” moment and then trying to forget that it was because I was trying to run 5k in 25 locations that started with different letters, I remembered how much fun running is when you just do it for yourself.

I wasn’t running for a time, I wasn’t running for distance. I didn’t even need to be there. But I’d seen people who had poured they Saturday mornings into this event (the guy giving the new runners talk had done 250 events all at Old Deer Park parkrun). I was ducking under trees and jumping over puddles, ridiculous given I was already soaking.

I tried to pick a dry line as the people in front of me flicked and splashed water over me and I in turn did the same to those behind me.

There was no malice. We were all just having our own moments with ourselves or the elements, potentially both.

Seemingly random poles marked right angle turns on the course as we dipped into and then out of trees, to the far side of the park and a well-trodden path, now submerged, with runners skipping either side to avoid shoe floodage.

At this point two things happened.

One. I realised that three is maximum amount of laps that I would ever like to do.

There is something about it which has a nice circularity, or maybe triangularity, to it. First lap find out what’s going on, second lap ok I think I’ve got this, third lap I’ll just go for it cos I’m nearly finished.

I get five laps as a concept but never gonna be a fan.

And second. Somebody slipped over in the mud around the first right-hand, right-angle turn of the second lap.

I found it pretty funny as I’m only human but it also made me think that each parkrun, and most runs, have their own special and annoying challenges.

My semi-regular parkrun in Jersey has one very small but nasty incline that you do twice and then a couple of deceptive long hills when it feels flat.

Old Deer Park parkrun had the feel of a cross country course created by someone who loved a protractor. Or was it a set square.

Everything felt like right angles and some of the respite and challenge was finding racing lines between each of these.

How do you find a racing line on a 90 degree angle? I didn’t but I still had fun trying. And I had a lot of fun on the whole course, three times over.

The rain throughout was just bleak, even for the UK. There’s a phrase from Thomas Hardy that I always misremember from GSCE English – the rain came down drenchingly, but we continued unblenchingly.

Never was a better phrase butchered for an event as it was for Old Deer Park parkrun that weekend.

It reminded me of so many things I love about running. But mainly the people behind each event and the passion that they bring to it.

There were volunteers who, including the girl that scanned my barcode, were as young as 14 and also…older than that.

Despite the conditions, they turned out to support a community and visitors, including someone from France doing their first ever parkrun, in a bleak and beautiful 5000 metres around a park in Richmond.

I know my Old Dear would be proud of all of them.