The Curse of the Follow-up

“A sequel is an admission that you’ve been reduced to imitating yourself” – Don Marquis

You do one write-up….that’s well received, so they ask for another one….but how do you avoid falling into the repetition trap?

I first wrote about parkrun in this blog a few weeks ago, so when called upon to do so again, I needed to find a new angle…and for once, inspiration came close at hand on the occasion of my 250th run.

Abingdon parkrun 189, 28th March 2015

“Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything” – Greg Easterbrook

I confess….I have become a temporary numerologist. That is, I have developed a fixation with figures leading up to my 250th parkrun. However, now that milestone has been crossed off, I can set aside those tendencies…but before I do, I just need to get a few things off my chest first:

Torturing the numbers : interesting or obscure observations

i) 6 is the new 7: although the Abingdon average ‘ABAV’ is 6.8 runs per runner, you either have to be in the 6 camp or the 7 camp….or have pulled out on your 7th run by the bridge, having completed 0.8 of the circuit.

However, the ‘6 runs’ camp is far more popular (17 runners) than the ‘7 runs’ camp (7 runner), so we’ll take that as our ABAV base.

ii) Darren Topp is ABAV: with a PB time today of 27:31 on his 6th run (congratulations!), Darren is therefore the closest fit to Abingdon average.

iii) Darren is also the Median: finishing in 122nd position out of 244 runners makes Darren doubly-average as he also represents the median….wow, what are the chances of that eh?!
I didn’t even have to torture the numbers all that much in the process…maybe there is something to this numerology lark after all?

iv) There were no straights today: i.e. sequences of 5 runners finishing a second apart…as opposed to a course with no bends.