My fears were somewhat allayed when the morning dawned dry, with almost a hint of blue in the sky….. although in hindsight, it was wishful thinking.
That was at 7am. By 8am the heavens had opened and by the time I arrived at the gates of Frenchfield, Penrith, myself, along with my determined friend, were soaked to the skin but scurrying bravely on.
Whether rain or sun, the volunteers at Penrith parkrun turn up week in, week out.
We have a large demographic of wonderful volunteers, but one that might not immediately spring to mind is a small group of local teenagers who are volunteering as part of their Duke of Edinburgh award.
Freddie Douglas, Phoebe Housby, Rupert Titheridge and Anna Todd have all found themselves in the midst of marshalling, time keeping, scanning barcodes, and even report writing as part of the varied volunteer roles available at parkrun.
Freddie, Phoebe, and Anna are all in year 9 at Ullswater Community College while Rupert is in year 9 at Keswick School.
All four teens are completing their bronze award; this involves getting involved in a volunteering role, learning a skill, being active and completing an outdoors overnight expedition.
A highlight for them has been the camping part of the expedition and ‘cooking’ dehydrated food on a stove! Each to their own I suppose.
However, Phoebe said that she enjoys her volunteer role because she likes meeting lots of nice people and helping others on a Saturday morning. I would say this sums up the parkrun philosophy perfectly.
Among the 294 runners, we had another youngster, Robert Watson, who completed his first ever parkrun in the very respectable time of 27:54.
Robert is all the way from Sydney, Australia, and has been staying with his grandmother who lives by Ullswater.
He was attending Penrith parkrun with his uncle, Andy Donnelly.
Unlike Robert, Andy has now completed 244 parkruns, 20 of which have been at Penrith. This is impressive given that Andy lives in Leeds.
Robert has spent the last month visiting family around the UK, but a highlight for him was visiting Center Parcs at Woburn Forest. I’m sure that Whinfell Forest would have been better, but he’ll know for next time!
There was a special milestone for Nigel McCombie this morning who completed his 300th parkrun. 292 of those have been at Penrith; that’s a whopping 1,460km around Frenchfield, quite an achievement.
Other milestones were accomplished by John Williams (a keen Eden Runner) who has completed 250 parkruns and Steve Keating who has completed 200 parkruns. Well done to all!
If you would like to find out more about this week’s statistics, go to https://www.parkrun.org.uk/penrith/results/514/
