Race Report by John Bennett
I was a Park Run tourist on Saturday 21 May 2016, with my first visit to the Park Run at Harcourt Hill (http://www.parkrun.org.uk/harcourthill) which is on a University Campus south of Oxford.
It is quite a good set up in that you can park in the University’s Sports Centre car park. You meet up in sports centre before the start and can also use the showers afterwards.
I was staying at the nearby Scout campsite for the weekend on a Family Camp for our local scout group. Six of us headed off to the Park Run (a mixture of parents and children), for the other five it was their first Park Run and they really enjoyed it.
The course is 2 laps of a sports field and entirely on grass but fortunately it wasn’t muddy but it was a bit windy. The course is marked with wooden posts with the distances is on which is a nice touch. The description on the website says it is flat but this isn’t correct; there is a bit of hill. It wasn’t a huge event, like Coventry. It was the 84th Park Run at Harcourt Hill with 98 runners logged. In the true spirit of the Park Run, we were made very welcome… they said “see you next week” as we left. If you get the chance go and see for yourself!