Today marks the 12th anniversary of the very first parkrun and for me it was also my 50th event!
I started attending parkrun on New Year’s Day in 2015. I’m very fortunate to have six parkruns within a few miles but I choose to make Beeston, Nottingham my home run. Mainly because it’s the local one for my running club; Beeston AC.
Carrie, my London marathon training buddy and brilliant friend was also celebrating her 50th event so we agreed to volunteer as tailrunners and to make sure that other runner’s knew about our celebration – we fastened large 50 badges and balloons to ourselves! I still haven’t decided whether to be offended at the number of ‘Happy Birthday’ comments we received – either way, we had definitely achieved our goal of being noticed 🙂
Today was one of my favourite parkruns (and perhaps even run in general) to date as lots of friends had joined to support (thanks to you all!) and in true parkrun fashion there was both cake and breakfast at the finish line.
Bizarrely enough, Carrie and I finished our 50th parkrun in almost exactly 50 minutes – what a brilliant round up for a brilliant run at Beeston.
My next target will be to attend 20 tourist runs; I have currently done 15, can I achieve this by Christmas time? I will no doubt keep you informed of my progress. My 51st parkrun is very likely to also be my 16th tourist event – Mansfield here we come!
Now, if you’ve never been to a parkrun, I am almost begging you to head down to your local event. I promise you will be hooked, the atmosphere is great and if you’re fortunate like me you will also make the most brilliant friends.
And if not, there is always cake!