Introduction

I’ve reached Milestone 100 at parkrun. This means I have run 5k at least 100 times at parkrun. Have I ever forgotten my barcode of course I have. Have I ever been illicitly entered into the results I suspect I have but I have never asked and never will. There will be another one next week. I have the most important thing at parkrun…Friends!!!

It took 5 years (including a pandemic), an obsession with conquering this mountain and volunteering to reach this milestone. For those of you wondering why did he include volunteering? Well in all honesty volunteering led me to realise the milestones and chrome extension challenges exist. Volunteering made goal setting easy, at eye level and added an extra fun element. The tendency with volunteering is to view it as a sacrifice to keep parkrun going. This is in some sense true. However some of this is team driven. It’s easy to reach a status quo with a core team and turn it into a clique or fiefdom (a word which has become popular again thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried and the downfall of FTX the crypto exchange) but what I’ve tried to do is extend the volunteer base to infinity. Add one a week to the mailing list and that’s 52 a year. Before long you won’t have a base you’ll have any army. A big friendly army.

parkrun journey

Before I let this acheivement go to my head now is the perfect opportunity to show the last 200 meters at Glen River parkrun (Winter 2019). I was almost beaten by a 10 year old in the sprint finish. You can see him lurking about 50 meters back in the photo. He catches up and we cross the line at exactly the same time.

The photo at Bushy parkrun where I crossed a parkrun finish line couldn’t have had a better quote on the board. Most mornings at parkrun you won’t PB. I’ve hit a personal best at parkrun 5 times in 5 years there will however always be a run, walk or jog and coffee that magical social glue. If you’re going to do something as a hobby it may as well be fun and parkrun coffee is always good fun. Somebody will always tease me about the times I’ve been beaten by a 10 year old and then ask me to volunteer.

Favourite parkrun Memory

Christmas Day 2021. The lead up to Christmas was a stressful period for my family. My mother had been admitted for emergency surgery fifteen days before Christmas. To make things worse she would need chemotherapy in the New Year. I tried to be calm but Christmas Eve my car had problems and I completely lost my head. I was an excuse for a son, brother and fiance that day. My sister convinced me to go to Christmas parkrun day at 5 minutes to midnight Christmas Eve. My sisters result then went wrong and she finished second on her first parkrun. The run and results snaffu really lifted my spirits. That Christmas only got harder when Julie caught COVID-19 but that parkrun as mad as it went was a positive. We were all there as a family. COVID-19 was rampant but somehow we all made it there for a run

Live a Little

Download the parkrun chrome extension and become a bit obsessive. These are some of my stats from the parkrun extension. No matter your ability you will find something to keep you going for just one more run.

Quote of the Week

“Lots of words are aspirational in sport. Champion, victor, icon, legend, hero, to name a few. But volunteer, although a word with less effusive connotations, should command similar prestige.” Matthew Syed