Parkrun News Saturday 22nd February 2025
26 MAC members recorded parkruns at 14 different locations on Saturday. As usual we had a number of excellent performances across a wide range of age groups. Performance of the day has to go to Harry Holmes with a 16.46 first finisher at Shrewsbury parkrun. Second fastest run of the day was by another youngster, Oscar Szabo, with his 20.59 and 20th position finish at Black Rocks. Leading the charge for the oldies at Black Rocks was Chris Gillott with a fantastic 22.02 and 24th place with Andrew Watson next MAC in in 23.25 and 40th place whilst hot on his heels was Elizabeth Burgess in 23.43 for 40th overall and 4th lady plus an impressive 73.44% age grading. Also running well for the ladies was Sarah Witham at Poolsbrook parkrun where her 23.47 earned her 2nd lady and 47th overall. Joss Winter also recorded a fantastic time of 23.10 at York where the numbers and quality of the field gave her 161st position out of 821 finishers!
For the chaps, Jay Bird down in London to run the National Cross Country later in the day for some third rate local running club that I will not mention (Ripley RC), went for a steady warm up at Gladstone parkrun and finished in a respectable time of 26.30 and 71st place.
Laura Bassetts trip to St Albans where she ran a super 25.05 for 55th and 4th lady may have been an attempt to win a tourist award which would have been trumped by Jay Bird in London in any case. However, reliable as ever, Dennis Holmes kept to the motto of “It’s never a long way, for a 5k” and drove to Luton, flew to Poznan, Poland then took a 2 hour coach ride to Konin to find the beautiful if remote parkrun venue that is Jezioro Zatorze. Being one of the most remote parkruns Dennis has so far ran almost guaranteed him a top 10 finish as the average number of runners here is 20. With more than 20 other British parkrun tourists on the same trip as Dennis the actual number of finishers this week was 41 making Dennis happy with his 7th place and 3rd Brit finish. Poland is a very special location for parkrun with 101 different venues to explore and I would thoroughly recommend a visit.
Well run everyone!
