Hello Everyone and happy weekend. Today is parkrun day, a free 5K event which takes place every Saturday morning all around the world. It is for everyone, slow, fast, able, disabled, big, small and everyone in between. Oh and don't forget about the super Mum's and Dad's who push their babies in buggies. You can walk, jog, run, run/walk, it's not a race, just a run in the park and loads of us here on Bridge to 10K do it religiously every Saturday morning.
Some of us may not be able to do a parkrun at the moment so until parkrun returns fully for everyone some of us will continue to take part on our own in a Virtual parkrun every Saturday morning called a (not)parkrun. Or if you are away on Holidays, prefer to run on your own, or do not have a parkrun close by you a (not)parkrun is perfect, please feel free to join in. Please post a little run report after your parkrun or (not)parkrun and let everyone know how you got on. The little run report can be done over a post parkrun coffee and treat/cake. (parkrun is all about the after run coffee and cake, and meeting friends old and new).
If you are a new graduate and would like to start, all you have to do is run, walk or jog at a parkrun or a 5K run/jog/walk (not)parkrun anytime today or tomorrow and write a little run report under this post. It's like a little community and it is good fun, sets you up nicely for the weekend. If you want to you can register on the parkrun website and you can log your 5K (not)parkrun. In fact you can log any 5K done during the week as a (not)parkrun.
For anyone whom has not done a real parkrun yet and if it is available to you, give it a try. It is the most wonderful community event. Saturday mornings will never be the same again.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you who ran in real proper parkruns and (not)parkruns. Happy running and have a lovely weekend.
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damienair
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Hi Damien and everyone. Can’t believe I’m one of the first today!
It was a friend’s massive milestone today; 500 parkruns! She started in 2011 and has been a total legend with her consistency of running, volunteering and being RD of Eastville Juniors. I had to go and be there for that one!
It doubled as an early celebration of Flossie’s 12th birthday on Monday! I toyed with W8R2, or just jogging the entire 5k at Flossie’s pace. I chose the latter and loved every step. I do love running with her. 🥰
Fantastic, well done to you on your parkrun, huge congratulations to your friend on her 500th parkrun and congratulations to Flossie on her 12th Birthday. 🎂
Yes 500 is a big deal isn’t it Damien? 👊 Flossie doesn’t look her age, but she certainly can’t run 5k even at my usual pedestrian speed. She has treats planned for Monday. ❤️
A very very happy 12th birthday to Flossie on Monday, I hope she will have a wonderful day, I do remember when she used to run with you and Barkcoded with you aswell at Eastville parkrun, she is such a lovely friendly dog and I hope she enjoys her special day on Monday.
700? Crikey! Well done on supporting your friend cheeky, that’s a real achievement isn’t it and I’m sure she appreciated your being there. And well done Flossie on keeping your human to a nice gentle pace!
I know, it’s bonkers this year OGR. We had 898 a few weeks ago, and over 700 every week except one (when it was in the 600s). These numbers are higher than before covid, and only bettered by one over 1,000 when we were the 2nd of the NYD double in 2018 (or 19, I can never remember!)
Flossie’s pace is one which I could run at forever! It’s too tempting to bring her every week again! 😂
Great choice cheeky! Flossie will have loved that run with her best friend. Good turnout for her too. Attention is the best birthday present they can have 🙂
tourist today at Bournemouth. Mixed surface so some rather muddy bits to be careful over. Doing my tourist but and stopping to take photos of Bournemouth AFC.
(not) parkrun for me today, but what a lovely one.
My 22nd run with Lanza Road runners and their biggest turnout ever - 36 of us, mostly tourists but a core group of residents. We meet at a kiosk, run or walk along the prom as far as we want (most of us for 5K, certainly the parkrunners do) then turn around back to the kiosk for coffee or ice-cream and a team photo.
It is windy today so outward was hard work but it was easier coming back. I did 36.16 for the 5K which is pretty much my Lanzarote average.
The locals were, as I expected, complaining about the cold. We thought it quite pleasant especially after all the rain we have had at home.
We then walked back to the apartment for breakfast in the bar. It is about 3.7km each way to and from the run so we will just have a short stroll and a swim later, nothing too strenuous.
Yes, a lovely friendly regular group and always new people to meet, many of them parkrunners. When I was fairly new to running a couple of them even gave me some coaching.
Well done RAS. I’ve tried searching for Canary Islands PRs whenever we’ve been. Shame there aren’t any, but it sounds like you’ve found the perfect solution. 😀
No, they looked into it but there would have to be a parkrun on every island. And to be honest I wouldn't want to set one up, because it would be heavily reliant on the locals doing all the volunteer roles every week while the majority of tourists breeze in to tick it off. We always come for 2 weeks so I would expect to run one week and volunteer the next, it's only fair. Although once I get my green tshirt (16th March all being well) I intend to do a bit of volunteer tourism at my three nearby parkruns plus any return visit ones. Proper "miss a run" volunteer roles, I mean.
I would offer to be an extra barcode scanner but that would probably mean scanning myself and a handful of others which wouldn't help the queues much
I decided to do a little tourist trip this morning and went to do my NENDY which was Longford parkrun, 1 hour 15 minute drive away from home. Ruby of course joined me. It was a lovely parkrun in a town park. There were about 50 people there and of course the Volunteers were all super friendly. I ran at a nice comfortable pace and I didn’t look at my watch. The course was 2 large laps and 2 small laps. I was shocked when I crossed over the finish line. I got a finish time of 31:13, over 2 minutes faster than last week which was my fastest time this year. Delighted with that and my thrusty Garmin Forerunner 35 matched the official time. Now to relax and enjoy the Six Nations. Looking forward to Ireland Vs Wales and Scotland vs England.
I was dragging her for the last 600 meters. She is very fast off the lead, I’ll do a long run tomorrow with her. She will be off the lead and has done 15K no problem. But she would no do a sub 30 on the lead. She would do a sub 25 off the lead no problem.
Another sub 20 for no.2 son, 27:08 for hubby & 28:36 for me. I was very happy with my time after a week of marathon training. Park run is my hard effort run in my plan. It will be interesting to see how I go with that as the mileage increases. It has been put there so I have to run hard on tired legs. Today felt good apart from the steamy conditions.
Hello All, we are currently on ski hols but it’s parkrun day so I looked up the nearest parkrun which is 2 hours drive from our resort. South Boulder Creek, Colorado. Unfortunately, we don’t have a car here so we will be sticking the skis on again today instead. Only 25 people took part last week and 70 seems to be the summer peak. So I will check out today’s results just to see what we missed. 😢
It is a shame to miss a parkrun but sometimes it can't be helped. There are no parkruns in the Canary Islands but most people find Lanza Road Runners after searching for parkrun Lanzarote. It is just an informal, fun, self timed run or walk although I did see one Facebook comment along the lines of "I am glad I checked so I won't waste my time if it's not a parkrun" - their loss, not ours!
Good afternoon Damien, this morning I was the tailwalker at Springburn parkrun, it wasn't all walking as the runners at the back of the pack ran and walked, my time was 47:14 with a pace of 9-26m/km, I felt quite warm as I wasn't really dressed to run but did have my running shoes on just incase I had to run, all in all I enjoyed my 11th duty as a volunteer.
Well done AlMorr. It is always difficult to know what to wear when Tailwalking.I Tailwalk juniors more often these days and now wear running gear and shoes as it can be hard to keep up with some of those 5 year olds 😀
Even the slowest ones only take about 20 minutes so not time to get too cold (usually). I leave a quilted jacket in the tent.
Well done Al, and smart move wearing running shoes for tailwalking. I’ve only done it once and had to jog most of the way because the injured athlete at the back of the pack was walking extremely fast!
Well done for volunteering Al; I remember having to keep running to catch up with the back markers once when Tailwalking which caught both Tailwalkers by surprise as neither of us were wearing trainers - I won’t make that mistake again!
Thanks Oldgirlruns, Cheekychipmunks and RunaroundSue, it was a little difficult deciding what to wear before I left the house this morning, the temperature was just above freezing with some icy patches, I knew if I ran I would feel too warm, eventually I wore a lighter jacket and jogging trousers with my running shoes, my time with quick walking and a little running was 00:47:14, that's the quickest time I have done over the 8 times I have been the tailwalker, I noticed the time of the tailwalker at Palacerigg parkrun this morning was 1:16:43, quite a difference from mine at Springburn.
PS, the tailwalker does NOT need to go at the pace of the last runner, I like doing that but sometimes there is as much as 10 or 15 minutes between the last runner and the tailwalker.
When I’m RD I like my tailwalkers close to the slowest participants. Partly to offer support if necessary but also because all the other volunteers are wanting to go for breakfast! But you are right Al, it’s not mandatory, though I think it should be.
I have been looking back at several different parkruns I attend to see the difference between the slowest participant and the tailwalker, in most cases only a few seconds, the longest was 5 minutes, however, at one of the parkruns there was a difference of 15 minutes between the third and fourth last but at that parkrun the difference between the last runner/walker and the tailwalker was 1 second.
Hi damienair, I’ve missed a couple of weeks because I was away with family and my ‘C25K revisited’ ground to a halt but this morning I was back to parkrun volunteering. A little gentle barcode scanning in the rain. Actually, not that gentle - with 463 runners and 4 scanners it was pretty hectic at times! But the queues were short and despite the cold and damp, spirits were high! I’ve done 86 now and am looking forward to the 100! I’m on 80 runs as well and plan to reach 100 there this year too! Happy running folks!
Well done Oldgirlruns ; they were really struggling for volunteers this week. Thank you also for taking over as token Queen while I’m away. I’m looking forward to a fancy dress celebration when you get to 100 runs. I’ll even run with you.
Today was my first parkrun run of the year. Last week I volunteered and did barcode scanning.
Got there in good time, enough to say hi to a few regulars. The RD's speech was long and almost inaudible from the back row with a rather excited dog joining in from time to time.
A frosty night and a cold morning. I had to defrost the car windscreen. The day was just starting to warm up. I chose winter kit: three top layers and running trousers. Good when you're lined up in the 2°C chill but probably a little too much when properly warmed up.
The run itself was without incident. It was a little slippery at one part. I said good morning to a few of the non parkrun regular park users. It amused me to see a Labrador carrying a tree branch around: ours used to do that.
On the final straight I got overtaken by a ten year old lad with his mum following a little way behind. I didn't have it in me to finish with a sprint.
Afterwards chatted a little bit, including with the guy in his 70s who always used to beat me. I overtook him half way through the second lap. He came in just under a minute after me.
I hung around until the cold started to permeate into my now sweaty kit.
Finish time 30:15, 40th out of 80.
Eight more parkruns until I can claim my black tee shirt.
PS. Da iawn Iwerddon!
Bright blue sky, bare trees, multi-coloured runners on tarmac. The start line of a parkrun
It was a beautiful morning here in Lincolnshire - sunshine, blue skies, but only 1.5c 🥶 Finally I feel as though I am coming out the other side of my piriformis/hamstring niggles, thanks to some intensive physio and lots of exercises/stretching and not running. It’s taken a long time! Anyway, parkrun number 99 today and back to Doddington Hall. After walk/jog last week, I decided to go for a gentle jog today and managed to get round without having to walk for the first time in months. Time of 37.47, which disappointingly was only 2.5 minutes faster than last week, but virtually no pain 🥳🥳 Two weeks break now as we’re going skiing, but nicely set up for a little VRB meet up for my 💯 on 16 March 😃
Great that your niggle is improving and well done on jogging all of it. Enjoy your Ski holiday and looking forward to hearing all about your 100th parkrun.
Kinda hard today. I knew it was going to be a frosty start, and I would have to de-ice the car, one of my most loathed chores, so when my alarm went off at 6:45 I really didn't want to get out of bed...but I'd signed up as Parkwalker. It's our 5KYourWay day today, so I wanted to support our Ambassador, as I usually do.
It took me a few minutes longer to get to the common, and when I got there I found even the approach to the course was water logged and very muddy. Two marshals were directing us the least muddy way...ha ha, over the ankle mud, before we got to the start!!
The actual course wasn't too bad, bit muddy, but they had re-routed to avoid the worst of it. Then, of course, I had to walk back to my car.
1:09:39 to walk round, bit slower than we would usually do, but in the circumstances not too bad! It was a beautiful day, blue sky and sunny, not really chilly at all.
My piriformis issue has thankfully subsided to being classified as a niggle (except when I'm sitting on it!), so it was back to Portsmouth Lakeside today at a slightly increased pace and hence a 33.17 finish time. Spent a couple of k chatting to a running buddy about our respective ailments! The usual selection of winter puddles, but thankfully the rain held off until I was in the final straight, so headed home pretty sharpish. Very satisfactory!😀
Hello... I ran yesterday... Garmin not charged...phone playing up and thick fog all contributing to my enjoyment.. I plotted my route after and I erred on the conservative distance of 4.5Km ... but I think, on all honesty, it was probably 5 K and a bit... so I am going to claim it as a Not ( not, maybe ) Park Run
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