The car said -2.5° as I arrived at Frenchfield but there was a brisk wind blowing the tape and flag around so with wind chill factored in, it felt about -7°.
Talk among the volunteers was how many parkrunners we might expect given that the M6 was closed in both directions to allow for the removal of the old Clifton railway bridge and the installation of the new bridge – an event that merited a mention on Radio 4 news and is going to cause chaos for this, and next weekend.
We were 70 down on last Saturday but nonetheless, a very respectable 278 parkwalkers and runners braved the icy conditions and Kemplay Bank carnage to get their parkrun ‘fix’!
As ever, we are indebted to our brave volunteers without whom parkrun wouldn’t happen.
Among our stalwart band we had Wendy Cannon, who is recovering from major surgery a few weeks ago and one of last year’s Duke of Edinburgh intake, Phoebe Housby, who has got the parkrun bug and comes along often to help out.
We weren’t hanging around for long at the pre-run briefing because of the cold, but still managed to find out that we had visitors from as far away as Chichester and Honiton, Glasgow, Darlington and Norwich.
We even had Chris from the Wirral, who was dressed as a duck. He and his family are staying at Center Parcs but he had left the kids asleep and popped out to get in his parkrun.
Milestones are also an important feature of the briefing and we had shoutouts for Steph Foudy who has clocked up an impressive 300 parkruns, and for Ken Winter who reached 250 runs. Many congratulations to both.
Yours truly is coming back after six months off due to injury. It is very slow and it ain’t pretty but I still managed to knock over 2.5 minutes off last week’s time despite being full of cold.
Daniel and Freya Buis, from Carlisle encouraged me on the final lap and finished just ahead of me, Daniel being a very good big brother and encouraging his six-year-old sister.
If you feel like parkrun could be a good habit to get into this new year, do visit our website www.parkrun.org.uk/Penrith. You will be warmly welcomed at Frenchfield.
A full list of participants, results and volunteers can be found at https://www.parkrun.org.uk/penrith/results/latestresults/
