Potternewton Park is in Chapeltown, to the North of Leeds city centre. For me it was under a two mile walk from my summer home in Woodhouse, though there was plenty of parking in the streets next to the park. The map shows it’s a fairly small park, though it doesn’t seem it from inside, with hills hiding the extent of the spread. Just a standard Yorkshire parkrun; hilly.
This was a special event, with a local favourite running his 600th parkrun. For now, outside London 500 shirts are fairly rare, but that’s not the case around Leeds, helped by Woodhouse Moor parkrun being the fourth to be setup - many people here have been parkrunning longer than I have, or more consistently, which isn’t always the case.
The course is 2 and a half laps, with the first lap starting part-way round the loop. It is also slightly different, with the initial climb taking you to the far edge of the park before a right turn. The next couple of times you turn right before this corner - there’s a marshal and a sign to make sure.
After a long climb, there’s a lovely long swoop down to the start, with cones to keep us wide to the left, because the course meets here. On the map above, this part passes the bottom-right of the triangle. Unfortunately, you then run up to the finish. Up a hill, that is, in full knowledge you’ve got to run the same hill twice more, once to the relief of crossing the finish line. When on a lap, you run back down the hill past the finish, with a left turn when you’re again at the bottom-right of the triangle, to head uphill. Again.
There’s plenty of space on the wide paths, and I wasn’t lapped when running around 26 minutes on a multi-lap course, so there’s time and space for all to spread out and find their route. Attendance normally hovers around 100, with an extra 40-50 this week to pay homage, and it could take more without incident. The surface is always good tarmacced paths, without even tree sap to make anything slippy on a dry morning. There are a couple of tight turns, but all racing ones if you’re fit and pushing it. It seems a decent park to walk around, too, with the view changing as you move up and down and enough turns to check the views in every direction.
There’s a large grassy area opposite the finish area, which was used for a celebration on this day, with piles of food provided by the 600th runner. The usual cafe, Mizzika 555, is just down the road, too. I enjoyed having such a short journey home, rare for me when in the UK, and walked home, not quite ahead of a heavy shower. My wet head was mostly just happy it had arrived in time to clear off well before the cricket started.
I’ve finally written up last week’s run, at Thornham Walks in Suffolk.
Results from Potternewton parkrun #163, 8/7/23; 141 finishers.