THE preparations had all been done for Gloucester’s 206th parkrun on Saturday 17 May – the equipment had been dried out from the wet event the week before and the course had been checked to see that the river hadn’t risen over the path.
All that was needed were for the walkers and runners to turn up. There were 29 finishers for the event, with locals joined by visitors from Sydney and Central Coast.
The wet weather course was being used, to avoid the saturated grass areas, which meant the crowd had to complete three laps. The Gloucester River was still flowing rapidly and the autumn leaves were dropping to give Gloucester Park a splash of colour amongst the early morning mist.
The first male finisher was Ben Russell from Menai in 23.54 in his first Gloucester parkrun (and his first time coming first at any parkrun). The first female home was Maree Craven, also visiting from Sydney for the first time, in a time of 30.21.
Other first timers at Gloucester parkrun were the Furchert family from the Central Coast, as part of their new practice of visiting parkruns around the area. Son Logan Furchert is building up his fitness so he can beat father Evan’s personal time, while young daughter Lilith was just having fun.
The only personal best for the day was by Susan Moore, who is gradually getting faster as she gets fitter from walking the parkrun.
Local John Watts was completing his 50th run milestone, running with his son Christian – with both of them breaking into a jog whenever the cameras came near them – and John sprinting at the end to beat his son home.
Leah Stevenson completed a morning of exercise, running 12 kilometres before the parkrun, cruising along the parkrun route then walking back to accompany her mother Elaine Murray, and then back again to catch up with father Bill Murray. No wonder her fitness watch was telling her to take four days to recover!
As usual there was a team of volunteers bringing this community event. Regular volunteer Rod Eckels was handing out the tokens, linking with timekeeper Trudie Murray to keep track of everyone coming across the finish line. Tracy Wilson was taking another turn as tailwalker, guiding the group from behind, while taking a few photos along the way. Sue Hedditch easily dealt with her first go at scanning tokens before heading over to mind the Gloucester Gallery to complete a day of volunteering.
By Carolyn DAVIES
