Temperature Drop Fails to Cool Down Runners Enthusiasm

Saturday was a cold but dry morning which helped when 159 participants took to Barry Island to run, jog or walk the parkrun course.

15 of this week’s participants where First Timers and represented 17 different running clubs.

This week the team held a pacing event with volunteers from local running group Seriously Mad Runners, running at even times between 20 minutes up to 46. The pacers help the regular runners keep a close watch on how fast they are going and to aim for a new personal record time.

Pacers for the event were:

Jeff Cox, David Brown, John Dyer, Rebecca Helmore, Julie Broughton, Nathan King, Samantha Blake, Gareth Donovan, Beverly Ooss, Alun Chapple, Geoff Twigg, Sally Bloomfield, Graham Yeo and Nigel Bleach

Thanks to these volunteers pacing our runners, 40 Personal Best Times were achieved.

This week, Run Director for Barry Island and Event Director of Barry juniors, Claire Thorne celebrated her 100th volunteering stint with a cheer from the runners as they awaited the start.

29 volunteers gave up their Saturday morning run on order to help ensure that the event could go ahead safely and to clap, cheer and support the runners as they take on the Barry Island parkrun course.

Each week a minimum number of volunteers are needed for the events to go ahead safely, there are a range of duties that need covering including time keeping, scanning, tokens and marshalling the course.

Barry Island parkrun started on 2nd May 2015. Since then 3,110 participants have completed 14,653 parkruns covering a total distance of 73,265 km, including 2,923 new Personal Bests.

The female record is held by Emma WOOKEY who recorded a time of 18:09 on 20th June 2015 (event number 8).

The male record is held by Oliver WILLIAMS who recorded a time of 15:58 on 25th March 2017 (event number 100).

The Age Grade course record is held by Angharad MAIR who recorded 88.54% (19:55) on 26th September 2015 (event number 21).

Sunday saw 46 juniors take to the Barry junior parkrun course at Romilly Park.

Conditions were dry & sunny but cold.

This week we had a milestone wristband presentation for Finlay Dee who has earned his half marathon band, it was also Finlay’s birthday which saw the juniors singing Happy Birthday to him.

junior parkrunners can earn milestone wristbands.

For completing 11 junior parkruns there is the Half Marathon band, 21 for the Marathon band and 50 for the Ultra-Marathon bands.

In order to ensure that these are given at the right time, the juniors barcode must be scanned each and everytime they complete a junior parkrun at any venue around the country.

There were six First Timers to Barry junior parkrun and five Personal Best times recorded.

Barry junior parkrun is a 2k run for juniors only (4-14 year olds). If you are not a junior please try one of the weekly Saturday parkrun events instead, like the one at Barry Island.