I made two great discoveries this week:
- East London has some very large ducks. Or at least I think they’re ducks. They might be geese. (A subsequent visit to Barking confirmed that this is an East London thing, not just a Valentines Park thing.)
- Ilford is home to the best-named running club I’ve come across all year – Sikhs in the City. It was co-founded by Fauja Singh, who took to marathon running at 89 and now holds the age 90+ world record.
Also, I ran a parkrun. Valentines parkrun to be precise, which is based at the 2011 Great British Bake Off filming venue, just north of Ilford. Valentines is a fairly flat, fast course, run entirely on tarmac. There are two laps, starting from a boating lake in the middle of the park.
I made it round in just short of 27 minutes, which is not too shabby at all, and more-or-less in line with previous weeks (see results).

Blurry but giant duck
I’m running a different parkrun each week of the year to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK. Please head over to my JustGiving page if you’re able to help out.
Egyptian Goose
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Ah ha – thanks!
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