Elspeth’s May parkrun report

To compete in the 2016 parkrun competition, members must run Lyme Park parkrun plus another three courses from the following list: Congleton – Cheadle Hulme – Bramhall -Wythenshawe – Burnage – South Manchester – Stretford – Wilmslow.

Once these four parkruns are completed, runners will have qualified for points on the main summer series table. As an extra incentive 1 bonus point is awarded for running each of the remaining courses with an extra 2 bonus points upon completing the 9th course. So a total of 6 bonus points on offer.

52 runners have now entered the parkrun competition. Of that 25 have only completed one course and 16 have completed 2 courses.

We have 6 runners who have completed 3 courses each and are one away from qualification. Sharon Jonhstone, Huma Rahman and Ian Ashcroft all need to head for Lyme Park for their 4th run. Patrick Grannan, Tim Billington and new member James McDonald have already faced Lyme Park so need to select a different course to tackle next.

At the end of May another 4 runners have qualified and joined Tony Hulme on the main table. Well done Steve Bunker, Alan Turner, Geoff Gilbert and Chris Cannon (even with his hamstring injury!). Proving their commitment to Saturday morning running Steve, Tony, Alan and Chris have all picked up bonus points for extra courses however no-one yet has run the full 9.

Once the 4 qualifying runs have been completed the best 4 times (including Lyme Park) are added together to make a time on which the main table scores can be based on. The combined current total of our 5 qualifiers are as follows:

Steve Bunker – 83m 23s

Alan Turner – 89m 21s

Tony Hulme – 93m 26s

Geoff Gilbert – 94m 34s

Chris Cannon – 95m 2s

The most popular course this month was Wilmslow with 14 different club members completing the course, Pete Speake taking 1st place on both his runs in May. Cheadle Hulme had no course cancellations this month and benefited from 10 members running, with both Andy Whittingham and Sharon Johnstone taking 1st in their M/F categories. South Manchester nearly had nil attendance however John Porteous re-invigorated from his antipodean parkrun training saved the day.

As June beckons, we face one of our most competitive months this series with 4 races scheduled including one 5k (Hollins Green). It will be interesting to see whether the parkrun competition follows suit and attracts those wanting to improve their fitness for the summer race season?

Elspeth