Typically for a bank holiday weekend, it was soggy underfoot and overcast as nearly 300 parkrunners and parkwalkers gathered with friends and family at Frenchfield for another parkrun. Most would agree that the temperature was good for running though!
Parkrun tourism is a big thing among the parkrun fraternity and today we had visitors from Yorkshire, Aviemore, Darlington and Australia.
Parkrun tourists don’t just run when they visit other parkruns, some like to volunteer, like David Chryssides from York who is a very experienced timekeeper and has kept time at Penrith before.
Sue Oxley from Aviemore has volunteered over 50 times but this was her first visit here and her 16th run.
Also running for the first time at Frenchfield were three members of Club Caterpillar. Frankie, Helen & Gail are all regular parkrunners at home in Darlington and are spending the weekend camping at Pooley Bridge.
Keen parkrunners like to introduce their friends to the wonder of Parkrun and Annabel Tiffin, 14, and visiting from Yorkshire with her mother persuaded her friend, Petra Vardy, also 14, to take part. Annabel is very keen on parkrun and achieved a new PB on our flat course. Petra said she enjoyed the run although she had been a bit apprehensive beforehand.
Some tourists don’t travel that far. Mark and Joe, originally from Belfast and now living in Carlisle have decided to take up Parkrun Tourism as they want to have a break from Carlisle parkrun’s five lap course!
Other parkrunners come from further afield like the McNulty family. Mum Sarah is originally from here and daughters, Olivia and Harriet were born in the North East but they now live in Perth, Australia. They are currently on a tour of Europe which includes several parkruns. So far they have attended parkruns in Scotland, Alnwick and Italy and have plans to parkrun in Vienna and possibly France.
As ever, there were shoutouts at the pre-run briefing, this week given by regular volunteer, Karrie Mundell, for those achieving milestones.
Among the runners, we had Kim Ramshaw on 50 runs, Viv Cuthbertson, who after six years not only reached 100 runs but also got a PB as well! And Liz Shackman who was present at the very first parkrun at Penrith, 10 years ago and today reached a very impressive 201 parkruns (her 200th was achieved last week at her daughter’s home parkrun).
It is the volunteers without whom parkrun simply couldn’t and wouldn’t happen however and today Andrew Richardson celebrated his 400th volunteer stint.
All these have happened at Penrith which means that in 10 years, he has only missed 52 Saturdays. Those who know Andrew can speculate as to why he missed those but he claims he was on holiday! It was to honour this achievement that Karrie stepped in to deliver the pre-run briefing (normally Andrew does this and we all hold our breath as he banters with visitors about where they are from.)
We have many visitors from Whitley Bay and Andrew is not known for being particularly complimentary about the seaside town so he was presented with a T-shirt from Whitley Bay!
Two other volunteers reaching milestones were Linda Stamper who has been volunteering due to injury (as many parkrunners do to get their parkrun ‘fix’).
Linda today reached her 50th volunteering role, usually as Tail Walker, an important role ensuring that no one comes last.
Rich Dixon is now a regular at Penrith but he started his parkrun life in 2009 at Town Moor, Newcastle. He is temporarily resident in Penrith as he cares for his elderly mother. Rich has completed 441 parkruns and volunteered on 200 occasions.
All in all, a very busy parkrun day at Frenchfield!
A full list of participants, results and volunteers can be found at https://www.parkrun.org.uk/penrith/results/latestresults/
