Parkrun Week 44

“There are many challenges to long distance running, but the greatest among them is where to put your keys” – Gabrielle Zevin

Good morning lovely Dashers. And welcome to week 44 of the parkrun Championship write-up/ramble/babble (take your pick) I hope that you had a splendid week; I know that many of you had a great weekend having seen the results from the Tatton Half Marathon and Lytham Remembrance 10k. Once again, you excelled with some top performances which I continue to be in awe of. From a personal perspective, I enjoyed seeing so many of you at Lytham (obviously at the start because you will have been half way home by the rime I finished!) An excellent event though, and good to see that the 2-minute silence was impeccably observed.

We had 19 Dashers flying round 6 different courses this week, with a strong turnout in particular (11) at the Dashers away-day ‘party’ at Ormskirk. As a side note, I saw that the parkrun World Record was broken on Saturday with a teenager running an astonishing 13:44 at Victoria Park in Belfast. Quite astonishing really; I’d struggle to do that on a bike! I’m sure if Helen Woodcock visits that parkrun next week, she will be challenging it though…

Of course, we had our own superstar efforts this week which were no less admirable. There were top-10 finishes by David Seddon (10th at Hyndburn) and Richard Marsden (4th), Jez Turner (10th) and Diane Dudgeon (6th) – all at Ormskirk. It was also a massive PB for Jez who smashed 20 minutes for the second week running and is absolutely flying at the moment. And, of course, not to be outdone, Jez’s better half, Elaine Turner, also obliterated her PB with a great spin round Ormskirk.

There are a lot of Dashers in supreme form at the moment and both Richard Marsden and Brian Shaw logged their best performance scores of the season in the Men’s Championship, with Richard especially putting up some excellent times currently. Brian sits atop of the league championship table and in fact extended his lead. Jez Turner consolidated 3rd place but is closing rapidly on Simon Smith in second and may have a chance of overhauling him in the 3 weeks remaining.

In the Ladies Championship, Jacqueline Shaw, Diane Dudgeon (by some distance) and Sarah Marsden (for the second week running) all recorded superb best-performance scores of the season in another stellar week. There was no changes to the top of the leaderboard, although Jacqueline Shaw did close the gap on leader Linda Coffey who took a week off. Diane Dudgeon looks rock-solid in the bronze medal position. Tracey Kinley made the biggest forward move this week with a 2-place climb into 21st after a good run at Ormskirk.

So, we are 44 weeks into this years Championships and with only 3 weeks remaining the final positions are becoming clearer – but not yet finalised. Certainly, on the basis of the standards being set recently, nothing can be taken for granted. One thing I am certain of, though, is that parkruns at Lytham Hall and Croxteth Hall are both cancelled this week and so visits there would be futile. Other than that, we should be good to go and I look forward to reporting on more Dashers excellence this time next week. Until then, happy parkruuning!