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Parkrun roundup 2011
For those who don’t yet know, Parkruns are friendly, free timed 5km runs for runners of any ability that take place at 9.00am every Saturday morning of the year, in parks all around the country. The first was established in 2004 and there are now 87 in Britain as well as 12 others in Denmark, Australia, Iceland, Poland and most recently South Africa. The Brighton and Hove Parkrun was set up four years ago and now attracts over 300 or 400 runners every Saturday. A total of 50 Lewes AC runners have done a run there, and in 2011 our participation was probably the largest yet, with many members trying a Parkrun for the first time.
In terms of participation, the Lewes AC champion by a very long chalk is Peter Whitworth (PB 24:30), who has now done 67 Brighton and Hove Parkruns, 9 of them in 2011. For comparison, the next largest total by a Lewes AC runner is only 17. The biggest participant in 2011 was Dominic Osman-Allu with 16 runs. The club’s fastest male Parkrunner of the year was Robbie James (16:26), in a run that also gained our highest age grading (83%), and our fastest female was Maria Judd (20:19). The fastest male junior was Ashley Williams (17:46) and female junior Alex Chitty (25:41).
Of those who did Parkruns in both 2010 and 2011, the biggest improvers from year to year were: for the men Andrew Chitty (from 21:37 to 19:47), women Carolyn Bennett (25:15 to 22:31), male juniors Sam Jackson (23:25 to 21:38) and female juniors Alex Chitty (26:49 to 25:41).
For most of 2011 Lewes AC held the course record, with a time of 14:51 set by Rob Mullett on Christmas Day 2010. However our reign came to an abrupt end on a sad day in December, when the record was broken by three different Phoenix runners in the same run, led by Ben Tickner in 14:30.
There is now talk of a plan to set up a new Parkrun at Eastbourne, and perhaps also another in Brighton, at Preston Park. So the statistical possibilities for 2012 are endless!
(To join Parkrun, simply go to http://www.parkrun.org.uk/brighton, register, and print off the barcode they will send you. After that, whenever you want to do a Parkrun anywhere, just bring your barcode along and run. At the end of the race the marshals scan everyone’s barcode together with their finishing tag, and the full results appear on the Parkrun website a few hours later. It is easy and fun, and at Hove Park there is a nice café next to the finish.)