Glasgow Parks Championships 2024Sunday 1 December
ESOC competitors enjoyed the 25th Glasgow Parks Championships.
The Glasgow Parks Championships is an annual competition, with three separate short events in one day. It’s a good social event, and many of the participants have been going to it for years. As in 2023, the venues were all east of the city centre. Start times were allocated in advance for the first two races, with a chasing start for the third one.
The first race was at Tollcross Park. This is a small but hilly park, with open parkland, formal gardens, and the deep glen of the Tollcross Burn. The Start and Finish were fairly central, and all courses looped around the park, crossing the glen twice.
The second race was a short distance NW, at Alexandra Park, beside the M8. Parking was north of the motorway, crossing by a footbridge. The park is on a hill and includes rough grassland with mown paths, some wooded areas, and a disused golf course. The Start and Finish were in the NW corner of the park.
The third race took place at Drumpellier Country Park, to the east of Glasgow near Coatbridge. (It counts as a Glasgow park because the SW corner is within the city boundary.) This is a larger park, with a loch in the northern part, and the terrain includes dense scrub, mixed woodland, open grassland and lowland heath, with a good network of paths and tracks and some gentle hills. The Start and Finish were south of the loch, in sheltered woodland.
The best ESOC results came from Helena Nolan, 1st in Supervet Women, and Hanne Robertson, 3rd in Veteran Women.
Full results are here.
Further details about the event are on the STAG website:
Race 1 – Tollcross Park
Race 2 – Alexandra Park
Race 3 – Drumpellier Country Park
Other entries categorised under: Event Reports