Gloucester Parkrun

IT WAS a small crowd of 18 finishers that ventured out of bed on a misty morning for Gloucester’s parkrun number 211 on Saturday. Visitors from Sydney were the first to arrive for the event, then locals gradually appeared out of the mist, timing their arrival to minimise how long they had to stand in the cold.

The group looked nonplussed when the Run Director started the event (‘do we have to?’ was written on their faces). But they eventually set off for their 5 kilometre walk/run, past the flowing Gloucester river and the park trees losing the last of their autumn leaves.

The first male finisher was Nigel Baker in 26.02, on his first parkrun at Gloucester, with Jessica Lyford the first female home in a personal best time of 27.56.

It was a morning of tales – John Watts proffered his excuse for not coming the week before (‘I couldn’t be bothered’ was all he could manage); while visitor Heather Morgan told how she had driven up the night before from Sydney on a whim to try out the Gloucester parkrun (on her 425th parkrun.).

But the strangest tale of all had to be that of John Bayley who claimed he had done a personal best time after being bitten by a snake during the week (don’t try it at home), although the parkrun stats later showed he was 30 seconds behind his best time.

As usual, there was a band of volunteers for the event. Di Mansfield was recovering from her 100th run celebrations from the week before, and lamenting that she didn’t have the latest parkrun gloves which had the special pad on the finger to allow the timekeeper to keep their gloves on while volunteering at that task! Di teamed up with Steve Robinson on finish tokens – who managed to do his task and talk to everyone at the same time. Regular volunteer Rod Eckels was the scanner; while Bill Murray was tail walker guiding the group from behind, while keeping up a non-stop conversation with fellow walker John Rosenbaum.

By Carolyn DAVIES