Parkrun Week 39

“If God invented Marathons to prevent people from doing something more stupid, then triathlons must have taken him completely by surprise!” – PZ Pearce

Good morning lovely Dashers. Another weekend of fantastic achievements, particularly those who ran the Chester Marathon – and all in amazing times that I could only dream about. Congratulations to you all.

Of course, this weekend also saw the 20th anniversary of parkrun and it was great to see so much coverage across the national media. It really is an astonishing movement and, to mind, 9 a.m. on a Saturday is still the start of the best hour of the week. Mind you, I don’t have a life so perhaps my bar is a bit low! What is incredible is that from that first event 20 years ago with 13 people in Bushy Park, we now participate in a global phenomenon covering 23 Countries and over 2500 venues. Every week sees new venues open up – just the French seem to have retreated from it but quel surprise there…..

It really is truly astonishing and has so many benefits outside just being a great way to start the weekend. I was reading a study by Sheffield University that calculated parkrun contributes over £670 MILLION to the UK economy. This equates to £16.70 in benefit for every £1 spent which is amazing; with £10 of the £16.70 being savings made to the healthcare and wellbeing sector.

So I did my little bit on Saturday and plodded round Burnley for the first time in a while, despite suffering from man-flu this week. And, yes, man-flu is real and clearly an almost life-threatening condition but yet, us men rarely talk about it nor complain. I looked it up and man-flu is more painful than childbirth (** source: Google based on a survey of 100,000 men so it must be true)

Anyway, those of you who weren’t suffering once again performed brilliantly with 17 Dashers smashing 10 different parkrun venues. It really is a pleasure for me to watch the results coming through each Saturday and marvelling at how well everyone performs (as I said, I have no life…. )

This week, we had Top-10 finishes by Richard Marsden (5th at Bolton) and Diane Dudgeon (2nd at Witton) which are super runs. Richard had an absolutely stellar week as his 5th place was also a personal best and came on the occasion of his 50th parkrun. An amazing week! There was also a brilliant PB from Barry Shackleton who dipped under the 30 minute mark at Worden for the first time – with a special mention also going to Steve Whitehead who had a great spin at Alexandra, Moss Side but missed a PB by just 1 second.

Brian Shaw, Simon Smith and Jez Turner still lead the way in the Men’s Championship but Andy Smith is in stonking form and, after another swift gallop round Stretford, is now only 0.11% behind Jez and is closing him down for third place.

Helen Woodcock is in equally good form and posted another best performance score of the season this week, which also helped move up 1 place in the league table into 9th. Sarah Marsden also had a good week with a 3-position improvement from 20th to 17th whilst at the pointy end of the league, Linda Coffey extended her first place gap over Jacqueline Shaw with Diane Dudgeon in a strong third spot.

And, as parkrun begins it’s 21st year, our Championships enter week 40 and the finishing line is in sight. There is still much to play for up and down the leagues and so hopefully we will get good turnouts before the weather truly breaks. Witton and Ormskirk are both cancelled next week but they are the only local ones I am aware of. Otherwise, have a great week, happy parkrunning and if you are unfortunate enough to catch man-flu, hang in there…..