Race date: 2 August 2025

Report by Steven Cahill

No Walk In The Park is held at Queens Park, Chesterfield at 9am on the first Saturday of every month by North Derbyshire running club. The course starts and finishes in front of the cricket pavilion and consists of a loop of the cricket oval before heading off on 4 laps of the outer path before returning at the far side of the cricket oval and running a final half loop. Entry is available for £5 either online or on the day before 8:45am. (The organisers did ask for numbers to be returned, so please be aware of that.)

After two full weeks of no racing post the South Yorkshire Olympics my legs had started to feel fresh again and I was keen to find out what NWIP had to offer. Arriving at 8:20 I had enough time to register, have a short warm-up reece of the course and change into my racing shoes. On the start line I recognised Marcus Rowland (who has recently joined Striders). We had a brief chat about our goals. Mine were low 17s with an outside hope I might break 17 (against a PB of 16:57 at Loxley Lash in June 2023). We were called forward to the start line and we were off. A good start meant I was able to move quickly to the inside line around the cricket oval and I found myself in the lead. The outer loop had a nice flow and apart from one short incline near the football pitches made for good running. The event doesn’t have sole use of the park, but the course is on fairly wide paths so any people dodging can be done with ease. I managed to hold the lead all the way, spurred on by the fact I could hear the next runner wasn’t too far away. I crossed the line in 17:12.8, which will no doubt be rounded up to 17:13 on Power of 10. Congratulations to Marcus Rowland who finished 2^nd in 17:16.8, a PB of over 20 seconds.

The winner of the men’s race was our own Steven Cahill in 17:12:08. The first female finisher was Kathryn Phipps in 19:21.4

Striders results: