I'm not a parkrun tourist. I've done a handful of different ones over the years, but I've never gone chasing a tally the way some people do. Still, Sandy and I had talked for ages about doing an "iconic" parkrun abroad, the kind of plan that comes up over a pint and then goes nowhere for two years. When we finally sat down and decided, I think I got the better of him. I pushed hard for Mura di Lucca, five kilometres around the old city walls of Lucca in Tuscany, and he didn't put up much of a fight.
A Wall Four Centuries in the Making
The walls of Lucca are the real deal. Construction started in 1504 and dragged on for a century and a half, finishing in 1648, built in response to the arrival of firearms and a complete rethink of how a city defended itself. Eleven ramparts joined by curtain walls, running a little over four kilometres around the old town. They're among the best preserved Renaissance fortifications left in Europe, and Lucca is one of the few walled cities in that league where the full loop on top is still walkable, tree lined the whole way round. Four centuries of military engineering, so that a few hundred of us could jog round it on a Saturday morning.
The Not Quite Taper
In the weeks before we flew out, Sandy picked up a back and hip issue that killed his training stone dead. Not ideal preparation for an "iconic" parkrun, but he insisted we still go ahead rather than write the trip off. Fair play to him for turning up at the start line at all. I'd actually trained properly for once, which made a nice change, though it did mean I'd run out of excuses if it went badly.
We flew in with a brief overnight stop in Pisa, then on to Lucca on the Friday morning to settle into the Airbnb. No big night out before a parkrun, obviously, though I did allow myself a single glass of the local red. Purely for research purposes.
Clockwise, Then Not
Parkrun morning started the way they always do. Sandy likes a proper warm up, so I watched him head out of the apartment a good twenty minutes before I needed to start thinking about getting moving myself.
The course starts at Baluardo Santa Maria, right by the Ristorante Antico Caffè delle Mura, and it's about as flat as parkrun courses get. A few tiny rises where the course crosses the old city gates, nothing that would trouble even someone as hill averse as me. The walls themselves run about 4.3km, which is short of the full 5km, so the course opens with a short out and back toward Baluardo San Paolino and the monument to the composer Alfredo Catalani. That first loop runs clockwise. Once it closes, the rest of the course is one full lap of the walls run anticlockwise.
My target was straightforward: get under 30 minutes, with half an eye on a 2026 PB if things went well. That PB currently stood at 29:34, set back home at Agnew Parkrun in Stranraer.
Standing at the start, stretching a hamstring that didn't need it and trying to look like I wasn't nervous, Sandy looked remarkably relaxed for a man who'd spent three weeks telling me he could barely walk.
My legs took a good while to wake up. First kilometre was 6:02, which felt about right for a 30 minute finish, but left me with a bit to make up if I wanted that PB. By the second kilometre I'd settled into a proper rhythm, and I came through in 5:53. That was enough to get me thinking a PB might actually be on the cards.
The Bakery Temptation
Kilometre three is where it could all have gone wrong. The run briefing had warned everyone that the wind was blowing in exactly the wrong direction, carrying the smell of a nearby bakery straight across the walls. My willpower around a warm pastry is not strong at the best of times, never mind three kilometres into a PB attempt. The trick was staying on course and not drifting off toward it. I stayed on the walls, kept the pace honest at 5:51, and kept going.
From there I just kept pushing. Kilometre four dropped to 5:44, the effort stepping up a notch but nothing I wasn't able to maintain, and by that point the PB was pretty much done. I could have eased off and banked it, but I wanted the sub 29 as well. So I pushed the final kilometre hard, chasing a time I hadn't seen in a while. Two runners I'd gone past around the 3km mark came past me again in the last few hundred metres, pace lifted or not. I thought I'd seen the back of them. Being beaten on the line by people you were sure you'd dropped is never much fun.
| Km | Pace | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6:02 | Settling in, on pace for 30 minutes |
| 2 | 5:53 | Pace coming up, PB starting to feel possible |
| 3 | 5:51 | Staying on the walls, ignoring the bakery smell |
| 4 | 5:44 | PB all but guaranteed, pushing on anyway |
| 5 | 5:28 | Final push for sub 29 |
My watch stopped at 28:59. I stood there for a second not quite believing it, then remembered there were still a few days of holiday left to enjoy it properly. All that was left was waiting for the official result to confirm it.
The Longest Wait in Parkrun History
That wait turned into most of Saturday. The four of us, partners included, settled in for a post-run coffee and croissant.
Happy Hilary, as I've decided to call her, was in a mood from the moment we walked in. Her English and our Italian weren't meeting in the middle either, which wasn't helping. She had her own idea of what each of us had actually ordered. One of us asked for a cortado and got the reply 'macchiato?'. It happened again with the next order, a different mismatch each time. I should have mentioned the PB. Might have cheered her up a bit.
Through all that I checked my phone every ten minutes for the first hour. Nothing, which is not a healthy way to spend a morning but is apparently how I'm wired. Checks through the rest of the afternoon produced exactly the same, nothing.
The official result finally came through at 18:39. It read 29:00. Not the sub 29 I thought I had, but still a 2026 PB by a comfortable margin over the 29:34 from Stranraer, so I'll happily take it.
The Numbers
29:00 official, moving time 28:59 over 5.01km. Average heart rate 145 bpm, peaking at 155. Average cadence 174 spm, average power 268 watts. Perceived effort 7 out of 10, which felt about right. A proper push, but never one that had me doubting I'd get round.
Conditions were about as good as parkrun weather gets: clear sky, 15°C, feels like 14°C, humidity 58%, a barely there 1mph breeze out of the northeast. That 1mph was apparently all it took to carry the bakery smell across the walls.
The Sandbagging Theory
But enough about me. Sandy's run deserves a closer look. He went off like there was nothing wrong with him at all, which didn't square with how relaxed he'd looked at the start line only minutes before. He was gone before I'd even settled into my own stride, which got me wondering whether three weeks of complaints about his back and hip had been less an injury update and more a smokescreen. Every message for a fortnight had been some version of "still bad" or "no better." I believed every one of them. I even offered to carry his suitcase up the stairs to the apartment, which in hindsight says more about my gullibility than his hip.
His defence afterwards, delivered with a completely straight face, was that race conditions and adrenaline fix everything temporarily. He finished in 23:13, six minutes quicker than me, on a hip that supposedly couldn't manage a flight of stairs with a suitcase. If that's what sandbagging looks like, he's good at it.
The Country Count
Parkrun tracks a little flag in each runner's profile for every country they've completed one in. Lucca took me to three, Sandy to four. All either of us said at the finish was "that's Italy done," which in hindsight sounds suspiciously like a checklist.
The Score So Far
Scotland
England
Italy England Scotland
New Zealand ItalyI opened this post by saying I'm not a parkrun tourist. Three flags in, I'm not so sure that's still true.
A 2026 PB is a 2026 PB wherever it happens to land, even one that took until gone six in the evening to confirm. I'll take Lucca over Stranraer for the view. I'm less sure about taking Sandy's word for anything again, but I'm already wondering where flag four might be.
Mura di Lucca parkrun takes place every Saturday at 9am on the historic walls of Lucca, Tuscany.