When 9 o’ clock rolled around last weekend, the persistent rain paused just long enough in some places, to allow for a relatively dry experience. No such luck this week, with Newcastle parkruns having to put up with everything from drizzle to downpour.
It didn’t look much drier elsewhere in the country. Cate Walker travelled down to Stafford to bag an ‘I’ for her alphabet at Isabel Trail. Cate’s unwavering commitment to completing this challenge has left her with only the elusive ‘Z’ to get, and she has confirmed that a trip to Zuiderpark in the Netherlands is only weeks away.
Most of us braving the rain stayed fairly local today. The other exception was Alex Harding, back down in Yorkshire for the second weekend running, this time in the county’s main city, and using the notoriously zippy course to clock his fastest time since 2019!
We had a full podium of sorts, with Heather Steel finishing as 1st lady at Gateshead, Lynne Cornell 2nd at Newbiggin, and Julie Cross 3rd at Leazes. Joining Lynne in the coterie of coastal parkrunners, Tom and Gill minimised travel in the grim conditions, opting for their ‘new local’ at Whitley Bay.
There were a good handful of PB’s today, despite a proliferation of puddles and overall wetness. Dave Roberts and myself both ran course bests with our sophomore outings at Denton Dene and Rising Sun respectively, and Aaron Mansell claimed his second in successive weeks, this time at Blyth Links.
Also at Blyth was Holly Porter, who after running in the soaking LGBT5k just the previous evening, scored an impressive parkrun PB. Another fantastic parkrun PB went to Jason Tipples, unusually our sole representative at Town Moor.
With Denton Dene only holding event #5 today, yet another parkrun made its debut at Ashington Community Woodland. No doubt a few of us will venture up there to check it out in the coming months.
