What a iconic North London building to run in front of for today’s parkrun in the shape of Alexandra Palace build in 1873 with great unrestricted views of our capitals skyline. Wow!

This building has a very important place in media history as in 1935 the BBC broadcast the worlds first ever public TV transmissions from the palace, it is amazing how far we have come in 81 years in technology terms since that time!

Again it was great to run with friends Martin & Angelica, well done Gabriela in passing your exam today, top stuff!

Course

The course is 2 anticlockwise laps of the park with an out and back section at the start and back to the finish of the course! Each lap is real multi terrain in nature with large sections of the top and bottom of the lap run on grass paths which is interconnected with either tarmac or lose gravel sections!

There is a lovely wooded section to run around and over the entire course it has a 61 metre gain according to my watch. The odd thing from a personal point of view is the steep parts are reached by a steady incline and then a steep but short kick at the back end of the course! So it you decided to run this course don’t let the height gain put you off running Ally Pally!

Important thing to note there is an alternative route available if this course becomes impossible or dangerous to run on and I hear it is a 3 lap route!

Personal Stats

My parkrun time 33:05 happy with that as I took it easy on some dump parts of the lap and I drove up the uphill sections. Oh well onwards and upwards!

Important info

There are a number free car parks around Ally Pally and for convenience to the start of the parkrun we chose the East car park.

If you need to use the toilets before the start we used the ones in the main building itself that are easy to find!

For cafes we used the ice rink one before the parkrun and is locate in the main in the building and it seems to be open early as we arrived at 8am, later on we used Lakeside one that opens up at 10am, wow the smell and look on their full English breakfast looked to die for 🙂

There are so many thing to do at Ally Pally including a pitch & put golf course, boating lake, and off course the ice rink available to the general public!

Final verdict

This is a very enjoyable undulating multi terrain course to run that in parts it feels you have entered a cross country race that is great fun!

As always special thanks to the Ally Pally volunteer parkrun team lead by Janet Smith that made me feel extremely welcome! Specially mention to the lady marshall that cheered as all on with vigour on the toughest part of the course, your enthusiasm is what makes me come back week after week!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner

Run on 17-09-2016