With a heatwave forecast for the weekend and the Aldbury 5 on Sunday, numbers were understandably lower this week. However, there were still 33 of us parkrunning with 16 at Wendover, 4 at Dunstable and 3 at Houghton Hall.
Kevin and Kirsty Dance were our furthest travelled with their run at Vingis parkrun in Lithuania. This is the only parkrun in Lithuania, and a popular international “V” which started in September 2024. Not surprisingly they were also the first of our members to run there and are now joint 4th at TRC in the “most parkrun countries visited”. In fact, a Cheddington pub question can now be what 2 parkrun countries are Kevin & Kirsty the only TRC members to have run in? For those who haven’t been closely following the newsletter – Finland & Lithuania are the current answers – maybe some possible holiday ideas for other club members?
In fact, with club recent runs in Finland, Lithuania, Austria and Malaysia, there are now only 2 current parkrun countries that TRC haven’t yet run a parkrun in – so time to start planning your trip to Namibia and Eswatini!
Meanwhile congrats to recently crowned Queen Liz Daniel who completed her alphabet at the appropriately named Queen Elizabeth parkrun this weekend. Her 12-year A-Z journey has taken her from Aylesbury to Zielony Jar with letters H&M being her favourites – strangely predicted by a Swedish multinational clothing-retail company!
There were no podiums this week but a course pb for me at Northala Fields, at their Hawaiian themed birthday event, in a time of 26:15. Did you know Northala Fields was opened in 2008 and consists of four artificial hills standing next to the A40 in Northolt, North London. The hills were constructed using rubble from the demolition of the original Wembley Stadium, which was closed in 2000 and demolished in 2003.
Did you have a go at guessing our most visited “S” parkruns? The answers were local St Albans, and South Oxhey and then with Southsea on the south coast, thanks to Josh Frewin. We move onto the letter “T” – an obvious local one but 2nd, 3rd are further away and much trickier.
Hopefully see some of you at our next TRC monthly parkrun outing at Cassiobury on 28th June. A fast local tarmac course and as it is the last Saturday in the month there will be pacers from Watford Joggers to help if you want to aim for a time. Further details can be found here https://www.parkrun.org.uk/cassiobury/course/
Andy Evans