Better weather this week, so numbers back to normal levels – 42 of us running including 24 at Wendover Woods.
One of the reasons for the larger number at Wendover Woods was that a former Tring parkrun RD was running his 500th. Also well done for some TRC milestones – Naomi Wager-Leigh running her 300th parkrun (43% Tring, Dunstable Downs 30%, Wendover Woods 5%) and Hilary Needleman her 50th (40% Tring, Wendover Woods 22%, Aylesbury 16%).
Some personal bests with Huw Moreton continuing to improve his “best barcode” – he is now down to a best position of 5th. Sarah Needleman and Louise Bladen achieved personal course PBs at Wendover Woods. Sarah reduced her time by 10 seconds to 21:32 whilst Louise knocked an impressive 2 mins off her time to 25:58.
Podiums this week – Mark Tikaram was 3rd at Gadebridge and Tom Moreton 3rd at Wendover Woods. Meanwhile Lynda Hembury and Christina Stevens were 1st and 3rd females at Dunstable Downs, Mary Ward was 1st female at Rushmere and Sarah Needleman 2nd female at Wendover Woods. Well done to you all.
This week our furthest travelled in the UK was John Manning at Ross-on-Wye but Kirsty and Kevin Dance were our furthest travelled overall at Posnan in Poland, the 1st from TRC to visit this course.
On top of all the Christmas celebrations there are opportunities for 4 parkruns in the next 2 weeks – 2 Saturdays, plus Christmas Day and New Years Day. Well technically you could do 5 as Poland hold their extra day on Boxing Day rather than Christmas Day! Anyway, just a reminder that a number of us will be going to Gadebridge on Christmas Day for our extra parkrun.
Some stats about Gadebridge – fastest is Luke Delderfield 18:45 and for the females, Becky Raftery 20:52. Mark Tikaram has run there the most with 58 appearances. The record number of TRC’ers at Gadebridge is 16, in fact our top 3 turnouts at Gadebridge have been the last 3 Christmases. Delay your present opening and sprout peeling and come along with your Santa hat for a festive run and possibly set a new TRC record!
Andy Evans