Sometimes it feels like we never away, but parkrun number 360 at Penrith Frenchfields Sports Centre marked the one-year anniversary of parkrun returning fully across England.
While COVID still plays its part in how things are done parkrun has come back strong with 50,848 events, 902,301 unique participants and 6,884,567 finishes in that time – impressive statistics for an event that started with a dozen runners doing a timed effort in a London park on a Saturday morning!
Closer to home this week there were 245 runners and walkers with 23 high viz heroes, otherwise known as volunteers who make it all happen.
Part of that crew this week were Sarah Wright pacing 30 minutes and Phil Cooper pressing on a bit more to offer a 22minute marker.
Pacing is used across the field of runners to try to speed up or in some cases slow down as there are often runners who use parkrun as part of a longer training run or those who have other events planned and they want to maintain an easier pace. Look out for the blue bibs if you want to give either a try!
Given the location of Penrith we often get visiting runners and walkers from a variety of locations – this week it was all the Ps – Pennslyvania and Preston…in Lancashire!
In fact, there was a combination of both with David Schofield, originally from Preston, and now from Pennsylvania and his nephew George Rainford sporting a Preston Harriers vest coming in first and second in a speedy 17.12.
They were joined by a group of Red Rose Road Runners also from Preston, including Anees Shaikh who was completing his 291st parkrun, with Penrith as his 50th parkrun venue, that is a lot of 5ks in quite a lot of exciting and different places.
The slightly cooler weather meant great conditions with 17 runners getting a Personal Bests (PBs) so if you would like to come along for a walk or a run or want to don some high viz then come along next Saturday, we’d love to see you, and you never know who you might meet from which part of the global parkrun community.
