On a beautiful spring Easter Saturday morning we arrived at Sunny Hill park that aptly matched the weather for this event to run the newest Greater London parkrun event!

So Sunny Hill is a 22 hectares park located in Hendon in the London Borough of Barnet and was formally known as Sunnyhill Fields before Hendon council brought the land off the church farmhouse back in 1921 and opened up as the park in 1922.

At the highest point of the park you have great views of the city below and even see the now famous arch of Wembley stadium, shear heaven to behold!!!

parkrun Tourism

I always find great pleasure in meeting like-minded runners who enjoy parkrun tourism as much as I do and amongst the tourists was good friend Scott Clarke, David Piper (who has run 264 different events) and Rams Nanda. Apologies for all the other tourist I have not mentioned by name, but it was great to meet you all 🙂

Friends on Tour

Another joy is running with very good running friends from my local club Stopsley Striders and both senior & Junior Luton, Wardown parkruns! So Jen, Julie, Rickey, James, Stephen, Kathy and my old mucker Martin, it was my sincere hope that you enjoyed yourselves and thanks from the bottom of my heart for joining me on one of my parkrun adventures!

Finally on this subject I would like to congratulate Jen Avis on running her 20th different parkrun event at Sunny Hill and in doing so add her name onto the parkrun UK most events table roll of honor, top stuff Jen 🙂

Course

The course comprises of 1 small clockwise lap, then 2 big figure of eight shape laps of the park. The surface in made up entirely of tarmac footpaths and the geography of this park makes for a very tough course to run!

There are two main inclines that have to be navigated twice on each figure of eight lap, the first is at the start of each lap with a hard short incline to the top of the park, then after turning right to drop down to the bottom of the park. Next is a steady prolonged incline around the perimeter of the park towards Church Terrance, then an undulating section along the top of the ridge with stunning views of the park and beyond!

Finally though at the crossover point again at the top of Sunny Hill park you turn right and there is a very welcome decline around the bottom part of the figure of eight to finish the lap, then at the end of the second lap you run into the finish funnel

My time showed how unfit I was running this course 40:02

So in summing up Sunny Hill has to be easily one of the toughest courses in all the 54 Greater London events to run, but please to not let that put you off as it is always great to challenge yourself and improve your times overall by running these kinds of courses!!

Facilities

I decided travel by car for this event with a small free car park available just inside the parks main entrance Sat Nav NW4 4XA

For the post run coffee we retired to the lovely Sunny Hill cafe situated inside the park with its speciality of serving Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Cuisine, also there are toilet facilities at the cafe available before the start of this event!

Other Facilities include

• Tennis courts
• Football pitches
• Children’s Play Area

Final Verdict

I would like to thank on mine and my friends behalf todays run director Simone Smith and her team of volunteers for making us feel extremely welcome and doing an excellent job, who would believe that you are only 4 events old, outstanding stuff guys!!!

So finally I recommend Sunny Hill park to you all, a tough but beautiful course that is an excellent addition to the Greater London parkrun community!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner

Extra News

I would like to wish my home parkrun of Luton, Wardown a very happy 4th birthday and you have gone from strength to strength with now averaging over 300 runners each week, but still keep that very friendly community feel that I always look forward to on my visits home!