Cheltenham parkrun - 14 June 2014
The local parkrun is held every Saturday at 9am to run 5km around Pittville park and is a regular event for a number of Striders. The event attracted 350 runners from a wide range of running abilities and even attracted “parkrun tourists” from Southampton and London.
The club were invited to fill all volunteer positions at the event and due to so many Striders offering their support for the event it meant that we were able to offer the parkrun’s first ever “pacing day” with pacers from 19 minutes through to 30 minutes.
Thanks to the following Striders who took up non-running roles:
- Clark LAWSON for being the days run director.
- Chris DRISKELL & Gordon BENDALL for timekeeping.
- Louise LAWSON, Claire SANSOME & Louise ALLSOP for barcode scanning.
- Dan HARTE & Amanda PILL for handing out the finishing tokens.
- Jon HOWES, Helen HOWES, Emma ABBEY, JJ WILLSON, Miranda STEWART, Alison GREGORY and Denise HALLAM for marshalling out on the course
- Joel FREELAND for taking excellent photos.
In addition to those, we were able to have some running roles (some with the pressure of pacing):
- Our tail runner was Dave MAYO .
- Alice JOHNSTON guided a blind runner around the course.
- Juan MORENO, Chris HALE, Jon BIRD, Rachel VINES, Andrew PATERSON, Amanda STEER, George PARKER, Rob GLADWIN, David SMEATH, Rob BIRCHER, Nat LOVEKIN & Trish WOODS were our pacing team guiding runners to new PBs.
At this family friendly event even some of the children of Striders got out of bed early to help out too:
- Joseph ABBEY (aged 6) & Daniel ABBEY (aged 8) helped out their Mum marshalling out on the course to point runners onto the football pitch.
- Sophie HOWES (aged 12), Jacob HOWES (aged 10) and Bethan HOWES(aged 8) helped out their Mum and Dad marshalling runners around the football pitch.
The reaction from everyone at the event was super positive with special mentions to the pacing team helping towards 106 personal bests.
Not to be outdone by others, the following club members archived new personal bests: Rachel CARY (19:42 & First Lady), Nicholas VON BENZON (24:08), Helen RAWCLIFFE (24:24), Charlie HAWARD (25:28), Nat LOVEKIN (29:01) & Susan FISHER (37:52). A special mention to a close friend of the club Helen MAYO who improved by 78 seconds to 35:42 and with a massive improvement of 12:18 since her first parkrun in February 2013.
The positive comments carried on after the event on both facebook and twitter:
“@Cheltnamparkrun seems the pacers did their job (esp the 19 min guy), managed to nudge under 19 mins for the first time today”
“First @Cheltnamparkrun in ages - great to see 350(!) runners out enjoying Pittville Park! Thanks @CLCStriders for pacing & all vounteers!”
“Well done Clark. Thank you to all the CLC Striders, especially the pacers who helped me finally run a sub 30! As always, it is wonderful to be with the parkrun family”
“Yes, well done to the CLC Striders, who also helped me to my 1st sub 30! Beat my last weeks PB by 49 secs !!”
Big thanks to all who helped and made the event such a huge success!</p>