Medals for Lewisham's Kent AC in London Marathon

Media coverage of the London Marathon tends to concentrate on either the international elite runners of the very front or the fancy dress charity runners further back.

In between are the many serious club runners running for personal bests and at the faster end competing for both the English and British Marathon Championships, which are held within the London Marathon.

The recent 2017 London Marathon turned out to be a great day for Lewisham-based Kent Athletic Club, who had more than 50 runners taking part. In the English championships, based on the cumulative times of the three fastest finishers from English clubs, Kent AC women came first and Kent AC men came second. In the British Marathon Championships, which includes any club from Great Britain, Kent AC women were pushed into second place by the Scottish team Metro Aberdeen while are the men also secured the silver position.

Kent's Amy Clements was the second fastest woman overall outside of the elite field and in fact she had a faster time that several of the elite runners.

England Athletics Marathon Team results from 2017 London Marathon

Kent AC, who are based at the Ladywell arena behind Lewisham hospital, are now firmly established as one of the top long distance running clubs in the country. As well as competing at the sharp end of events like London marathon, the club has training groups for all levels of ability from parkrun improvers to Olympic athletes. The club also has some very talented sprinters including Olympians Jack Green and Conrad Williams.

Membership for adults is only £35 a year, but if you would like to try out a session before deciding whether to join you would be welcome at the track on a Tuesday night, starting at 7 pm.

Peckham Rye parkrun

Peckham Rye is the latest local park to host parkrun, the free weekly Saturday morning 5000m run. The inaugural event took place on Saturday 21 June with 200 runners setting off from the start by the Colyton Road entrance, and doing three laps of a circuit taking in the flatter area of the park that includes the formal gardens and lake. Blog 7T has a full report and photos.

Sky Sports presenter Kate Riley (left) was timekeeper at first Peckham Rye parkrun
(photo by @ronnie_haydon)

The first event of a new parkrun always attract a big crowd as runners come from far afield to take part, after which they tend to settle down to a smaller number and gradually build up. Yesterday's second event included 67 runners, and will no doubt increase steadily over next few months.

The other well-established South London parkruns are all still going strong and indeed growing including Hilly Fields, Dulwich Park, Southwark Park, Crystal Palace, Brockwell Park, Burgess Park, Avery Hill Park (Greenwich) and more. For details of all these, see the parkrun map.

All events start at 9 am on Saturday, with most people finished by 9:30ish and heading for a post-run coffee. You can just turn up and run, but nearly everyone registers as a one off with parkrun - this gives you a barcode which you can get scanned wherever you run, and then sent details of your times etc. The events are friendly and inclusive, attracting runners of all abilities.

Hilly Fields Parkrun Birthday

This Saturday (9 am), Hilly Fields parkrun will be celebrating its first birthday. In the last 12 months, 887 different people have come to the park on a Saturday morning and run 5 km. The combined distance they have run is 17,640 km - which is further than from Hilly Fields to Sydney, Australia. Most weekends there are between 70 and 100 people taking part, plus a team of volunteers organising it. For the birthday celebrations there will be cake and prizes - and running the course around the park in the opposite direction to usual.

I've written here before about the wonders of parkrun - it's a free, accessible run (or walk if you want), and a great community event. For details of Hilly Fields parkrun, see the website. Weather forecast is that Saturday will be a day of sun in a week of rain, so get along and join in!

Photo from Hilly Fields parkrun flickr group

There are other parkruns in many other London parks (see map here). Last week a new one started in Southwark Park, getting off to a fine start with 150 people taking part (see report here).

For a round up of South London running, check out Go Feet.

Hilly Fields Parkrun

A while ago I got the running bug back for the first time since I was at school and got in the cross country team as a result of keeping going to avoid the bullies who always stopped off on the course for a smoke and some mindless violence.

I started off last year with the NHS 'Couch to 5k' programme, a series of podcasts that take you gently from a 'walk 5 minutes, run 2 minutes' start through to running continuously for half and hour. If you can't imagine yourself being able to run 5 km without a break I really suggest giving this a go - you can also have fun trying to work out which artists are being pastiched in the music specially recorded for the podcasts.

There's a solitary dimension to running, 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' and so on, going off into your own private world or perhaps into a kind of nothingness: 'really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it another way: I run in order to acquire a void' (Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about running).

But running is also a social activity- after all almost two million people are estimated to run regularly in England alone. Whether you are interested in competition or not, running with other people is not only enjoyable but also raises your own game. And the easiest way into running like this is through the parkrun phenomenon - weekly timed runs in parks all over the country. Locally there are regular park runs in Hilly Fields, Crystal Palace Park, Dulwich Park, Greenwich Park, Burgess Park and Brockwell Park, among others.

You don't have to join an athletic club, you just go on to the Parkrun website and register once. You can then take part in parkruns anywhere.

You don't have to book in advance - just turn up and run.

You don't have to be superfit - the runs are for people of all levels of ability. There are club runners who tear off in front and others who run steadily at their own slow pace.

You don't have to pay any fees, either to register or take part in a run.

You do get a properly organised run, with a marked out course, volunteer helpers and timing of your run. How it works is that when you register with Parkrun you are allocated a barcode which you print out. As you cross the line at the end of the run you are given another barcode token which is linked to your finishing time. You then get this token and your personal barcode scanned on the spot, which generates a list of runners and times published on the website very soon afterwards.

I took part in the Hilly Fields run for the first time at the weekend and will definitely be going back. The course is three times round the park, the uphill bits are tough of course but they are balanced by the downhill sections! They meet every Saturday at 9 am near to the children's playground, with around 100 people taking part. Many people have a coffee afterwards at the Pistachios cafe in the park.

Get fit for free with coffee and trees - what's not to like?