With points up for grabs in the 1st event of the 2025 Off-Road Championship (ORC), there were 62 of us at parkrun on Saturday. The only time we have seen more was on 1st January 2020! There were 35 at Dunstable Downs and 11 at Wendover Woods. It was great to see so many of you. The current membership of TRC have now run more than 18,000 parkruns! After five 2025 parkruns, 18 of you still have a 100% record this year.
Congrats to Brian Richards who achieved an all-time PB at Cassiobury with his time of 27:57 knocking just over a minute off his previous best.
Course PBs for Ashley Mitchell at Wendover Woods (by an impressive 2 minutes), and then Sarah Needleman (by over a minute), Josh Frewin, Lydia Vye and Tom Moreton, all at Dunstable Downs.
A big welcome back to parkrun for Judy Ewart and Matt Wade who we haven’t seen for some time.
Neil Adcock visited his 150th different location at Brighton & Hove. Just over half his parkruns have been at different locations, only wife Emma has run at more different locations at TRC.
We almost had a clean sweep of the podiums this week at Dunstable Downs with Ben O’Keeffe (who managed to equal his Dunstable parkrun to the second), Josh Frewin and Matt Wade 1st, 2nd, 3rd for the men and Becky Raftery and Sarah Needleman 1st and 2nd for the women. Lynda Hembury was also 3rd female at Church Mead. Well done all.
Aesthetically pleasing time goes to Jez Wood with a time of 24:24 at South Oxhey.
Our furthest travelled this week was Hermione Houston who managed a parkrun at Lower Hutt near Wellington in New Zealand. This was after a 4-day 230km bike trip which she finished on Friday evening.
In our A-Z of parkruns most visited by TRC we have arrived at the letter “K” – See if you can guess the top 3 – you’re looking at East Anglia. the Lake District and Poland!
Our next TRC trip is on 8th February to the recently started Oaklands College in St Albans. Further details can be found here https://www.parkrun.org.uk/oaklandscollege/course/
Andy Evans