Elspeth writes… Organising races in winter can be challenging, and this month we have seen the most testing conditions in March I can remember in my years with the club. The postponement of our own Waters Wilmslow Half Marathon was a great disappointment but there have been many other casualties such as the Trafford 10k and Stafford Half to name a few. Unfortunately, parkrun was not spared and the first band of ice and snow at the start of March meant that only Wilmslow parkrun took place on Sat 3rd with 11 of our runners braving the ice to take part. All the other seven parkruns in our competition were cancelled that day.
At the end of March, we now have 57 members who have participated in at least one of the eight parkruns in this year’s competition (2 entries on the 2018 Race Series table).
We have just one qualifier this month, Tony Hulme who has completed the ‘Enthusiast’ courses of Sale Water, Burnage, Stretford and Wythenshawe. Currently we have more qualifications on the ‘Enthusiast’ courses (Richard Lawson, Ian Ashcroft and Tony) than we do on the ‘Popular’ courses (only Colin Walton), though Richard only needs to run at Bramhall and he will have points for both courses and is poised to become the first person to complete all eight courses.
Looking ahead to April we also have Matt Taylor and Gareth Trimble who have each completed three of the ‘popular’ courses at Bramhall, Wilmslow and Congleton, and now must head to Lyme Park for qualification. Rob Jackson has run at three of the ‘Enthusiast’ courses – Wythenshawe, Sale Water and Burnage, so will need to travel to Stretford to qualify.
We have two parkrun milestones this month, both Di McVey and Mark Crossland hit the big 50. (Mark doing a double by also celebrating his 50th birthday too!). Notable runs this month include Jim Pendrill’s first outing at parkrun this year taking the number one spot at Wilmslow after his recent and welcome return to the race series at Radcliffe in Feb where he was WRC’s first runner in. The prize for the most exotic parkrun of the month falls a little flat this month, with both the Bygraves and Richard Lawson showing up at Conwy – it is near the beach and the road signs are in a foreign language (Welsh)! Surely, we can get a little more tropical next month?
We now have warmer temperatures being predicted for the first weekend of April so hopefully a welcome return to spring weather will make getting up for parkrun a little easier.
Happy April parkrunning
Elspeth