Penrith’s parkrun saw 259 people run, jog and walk the 5k course at Frenchfield, including a number of Eden Runners competing for points in the local club’s monthly parkrun champs competition.
As well as the green and blue of Eden Runners, another 32 clubs were represented including orienteers, tri-athletes and ParkWalkers and 26 people scored a Personal Best. Event 351 saw 39 first time visitors to Penrith parkrun and nine new recruits to the parkrun family.
Among those taking part for the first time was 16-year-old Ellis Pickering who was encouraged by his younger twin sisters Emily and Amy who have just started coming to parkrun. Emily and Amy, 11, are pupils at St Catherine’s, and they love running and parkrun. Both came in under 24 minutes with Amy achieving a PB of 23 minutes.
There is a lot of organisation behind the scenes and parkrun relies on volunteers to set up, marshal, scan barcodes and keep time.
In charge of the volunteer roster is David Robertson who assigns duties. David used to be a familiar sight, marshalling on the bridge but stepped into the role of volunteer co-ordinator in order to make sure we have enough people to allow the event to go ahead. He is rapidly approaching his 150th turn as volunteer.
Also volunteering is Rose Gilldaley who is 14 and is helping out as part of the bronze Duke of Edinburgh award. Rose has covered several of the different tasks available and enjoys being part of the set-up team.
In the pre-run briefing, there is always a shout out to who achieve milestones and today was the turn of Paul Tilley from Sedgefield in Co Durham. Fifty-something, Paul had completed 97 parkruns but then stopped four years ago, blaming a combination of injury, apathy and COVID. However, Paul has pushed himself back out and now has 100 parkruns under his belt. Well done for not giving up, Paul.
If you would be interested in finding out more about Penrith parkrun, please visit the website at parkrun.org.uk/penrith. A full list of results can be found at https://www.parkrun.org.uk/penrith/results/latestresults/
