New Year’s Day at Jubilee parkrun, Bedford

2026 is here and what better way to start the year than a bit of parkrun tourism? The destination for my first run of the year was Jubilee parkrun, Bedford.

I have always enjoyed the NYD events as a great start to the New Year. Pre COVID Pocket parkrun ran at a later time, allowing people to do the New Years Day double and always had a huge turnout. However, with the double now condemned to the history books, that is no longer an option. They did do a couple of NYD events but this year was the 3rd in a row that there was no event on my doorstep so I’d have to travel.

Last year saw the disappointment of my 1st, 2nd and 3rd options all get cancelled due to the storm conditions. As I wrote in my 2025 review yesterday, this was the start of a poor beginning to the year. So this year I was more hopeful, the question was where? My new NENDY is at Franks Farm, but they have only just started and weren’t hosting an event so I looked towards Bedford. Technically the original Bedford parkrun is closer, but Jubilee parkrun, Bedford (that only started in 2025) is probably closer in the car. Couple that with the fact that it is one of just 5 ‘J’ parkruns in the UK and, having eschewed Jamaica Pond in favour of Danehy Park parkrun when I was in Boston last year, ticking another letter off did it for me.

My wife and I have had a dry Christmas so there was no threat of waking with a thick head. However, I had made the schoolboy error of not changing my gym session yesterday so had been there at 6am and having stayed up to ring in the New Year, it had been a long day. It was nothing a couple of coffees couldn’t solve though and soon I was off on my way.

Parking is at the nearby John Bunyan Leisure Centre and there were several marshalls on hand to help get parked up. It was then about a 5min walk to the start area. Fortunately it wasn’t as cold as I had feared it would be but standing around on the grass did mean I started to get cold toes before we began.

A lot of the people around did seem to be fellow tourists, probably driven by other events not going ahead coupled with the aforementioned ‘J’. In total there were 161 runners taking part so it wasn’t too busy. After a briefing it was time to head off.

I hadn’t fully understood the course from the briefing but I knew I wouldn’t be leading so that wasn’t an issue. As it was it was a relatively simple route. From the start there is a mini anticlockwise loop, before picking up the main clockwise loop which you do 2.5 times. The course was all paved although the paths were quite narrow so a couple of points I had to pop on to the grass when passing. It is also a little more undulating than back home, but with 20m gained in total, is still pretty flat. It did surprise me how quickly the field spread out as well. By the end I was almost 30s ahead of the next finisher and for large sections it felt like I was running on my own. For the 2nd week in a row I was pleased to narrowly avoid being lapped by a very fast 1st finisher.

The first km I had felt a little sluggish but overall I was pretty pleased with how I ran. My splits were pretty consistent throughout and I didn’t over exert too much which is a good start for this running year. I finished with a time of 23:52 which was pretty consistent with my run at Pocket on the prior Saturday and still gives things to work on.

Last year I managed 13 parkruns so just 12 left to match that in 2026 but this was another enjoyable parkrun start to a year.