The sun played hide and seek with the clouds and a pesky breeze challenged the 285 who ran, jogged and walked around Penrith’s Frenchfield on Saturday.
Among the parkrunners were 58 first timers at Penrith, of whom 11 were taking part in their first ever parkrun; 22 people achieved a personal best and over 30 clubs were represented.
Parkrun cannot happen without volunteers and we had 25 at this event, among whom are Peter and Marion Fawkes who both have a long and distinguished career in athletics and have been helping out at Penrith parkrun since they moved here from the North East two years ago.
They both wanted to give something back and enjoy seeing the other side of taking part.
Among their achievements are several British, European and World records and titles for Marion. Now Peter takes a trowel to scoop the slugs off the tarmac path by the river!
A number of our regular parkrunners were away but we were able to welcome many visitors including Krystal and David Paterson from Southampton.
This was their first visit to Penrith and they were looking forward to a fast, flat run.
During the absence of Parkrun due to the pandemic, a Facebook group was set up by Penrith Parkrunner, Suzanne Smith to motivate and encourage people to keep on running.
The Virtual Sanity 5K Challenge became a lifeline and inspiration for over 100 runners all over the UK, with Suzanne’s optimism and encouragement.
Sarah Wright, another Penrith parkrunner, provided weekly pre-run race briefings, putting her own slant on those usually provided by Andrew Richardson.
The VS5K Challengers wanted to thank them for keeping everyone going so after Suzanne had run (coming in as second female) and Sarah had marshalled at the main gate, there was a presentation to recognise their invaluable contribution during such a difficult time.
It was Suzanne’s first time back to Penrith as she has had other races and family commitments but she said she was overjoyed to be back at Frenchfield among so many friends.
For all results visit https://www.parkrun.org.uk/penrith/results/latestresults/
