Plenty of Z’s this week but don’t fall asleep as lots of parkrun action to update you with.
47 ran this week and 41 the previous week across 29 different parkruns. John Manning made an admirable effort to be the “furthest travelled” with his run at Aplins Weir, North Queensland, Australia but was beaten by Liz Daniel with her runs at Pakapakanthi and then Torrens both in Adelaide.
There were lots of locations visited that hadn’t seen TRC before and this week’s explorers included Liz Daniel (Torrens and Pakapakanthi), Neil and Emma Adcock (Battersea), Jules Wake (Ziegelwiese).
Jules Wake ran at Ziegelwiese in Germany, claiming a ‘Z’ while Alison Bill, Chris Bill, Judy Ewart, Sue Frewin, Ros Cranston and Angelo Lucatello claimed their Z at Zielony Jar in Krakow, Poland. Kudos to them as they then ran a 10k in Krakow that evening. The Krakow visit was the most TRC at a Polish parkrun, and the most seen at a “Z”, doubling the number of club runners who have run at a “Z”. Poland is now, together with Australia, the joint 2nd most visited TRC parkrun country (measured by number of individuals rather than runs) and as an overseas parkrun city Krakow (with the runs split between Krakow and Zielony Jar) has now seen more Tring members than any other overseas city, overtaking Lucca in Italy.
Plenty of podiums with Tom Moreton (1st at Wendover 2 weeks in a row), Josh Frewin (1st at Aldenham), Becky Raftery (1st female at Aylesbury), Ben O’Keeffe (2nd at Houghton Hall), Lorraine Hurford (2nd female at Bury Field) and Louise Bladen (3rd female at Dunstable).
Well done to Jamie Lee who ran an all-time parkrun PB at Buckingham in a time of 22:56, knocking 39 seconds off his previous PB from all courses of 10 years ago.
Well done to Tom Moreton who, as well as finishing fastest for both weeks, also ran a course PB at Wendover in a time of 19:03, knocking 10 seconds off his previous best. Other course PBs included Dave Cary ( 7 seconds to 25:06) and Gill Gordon (25 seconds to 34:48) at Wendover Woods, Lydia Vye (1 minute to 27:44) and Kirsty Dance at Dunstable Downs (16 seconds to 33:38), Josh Frewin (just over 1 minute to 18:53) at Aldenham and Len Van de Linde (32 seconds to 27:17) at Linford Wood.
Aesthetically pleasing times were run by Matt West with his mirrored 34:43 at Wendover, Len Van de Linde with matching 30:30 at Dunstable and not out done within the family Katie Van de Linde also had a matching 25:25 at Linford Wood.
Meanwhile, the 3 members of our 2025 “100% club”, unsurprisingly, all took part in both weeks – so well done to Clare Murphy, Lorraine Hurford and Neil Adcock. They will probably be checking each other’s holiday and race plans to see who can keep going the longest!
Ann-Marie and I were visiting friends in Lincoln so thought we would take the opportunity to run a rare ‘Y’ at Yarborough Leisure Centre. Unfortunately, almost to the minute that we checked in at the Lincoln Premier Inn, Yarborough announced that they would be postponed for the foreseeable future due to financial problems of the leisure centre where the course is run. Our friends just wanted to run in town, so we resisted the temptation to drive a few miles east to an equally rare “Q” that has recently started at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and instead ran at Lincoln parkrun instead, a lovely flat 3-lapper around a lake and some woods. The good news is that the Yarborough issues have been resolved and so we may be planning more trips to Lincoln!
A reminder that the next TRC parkrun outing is a trip south to the popular trail route on 19th April at Church Mead in Amersham. More details can be found here https://www.parkrun.org.uk/churchmead/course/ Hope to see you there.
Andy Evans