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If parkrun existed during the Roman era, some people would be running around parks on a Saturday morning with a red t-shirt with the title of this blog on their back.  However, our numbering system seems to be a bit simpler so a nice 50 will do!

In case you haven't gathered I ran my 50th parkrun this weekend.

If you don't know what parkrun is, in a nutshell it is a FREE timed 5k run run completely by volunteers.  These happen in parks all over the country at 9am every Saturday morning (oh and for some parkruns on Christmas & New Year's Day as well)  The initiative has also taken off in Australia, America, Poland, Scandinavia.  There is even a parkrun at for the squaddies at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan!

You get issued with a bar code and once you complete the run, you get a placing token.  These are then both scanned and by the afternoon you receive an e-mail and/or a text telling you your time and position and the website is updated with the results.

All the info you could want to find, including how to register and obtain you bar code go to the website parkrun.

Now I am far from unique achieving 50 parkruns, there are literally hundreds of people that have done it.  There are also hundreds that are in the 100 club and a select few that have notched up 250 parkruns! For youngsters, the first milestone is 10 runs.

When you reach one of these milestones you are awarded with a technical t-shirt. 

It is very pleasing to have reached the 50 milestone. That means I have run 250k mainly on Saturday mornings, but with a couple of Christmas Days and & New Year's Day thrown in.

I ran my first parkrun at Bromley on 27th August 2011 finishing in 26:03 and I ran my 50th yesterday at Bromley in 22:59.  Although it was only my 41st parkrun at Bromley.  I have also managed to take in local parkruns at Orpington, Herne Hill, Ladywell, Bexley, Crystal Palace & Dulwich and also a couple further afield in Poole & Oxford. My current PB is 21:53.

I have not always run parkrun alone.  My wife Mich has now run 13 parkruns and Max has been pushed around in the running buggy over a dozen times and at half a dozen venues.

As I mentioned at the beginning, parkrun is all down to volunteers, without volunteers parkrun wouldn't exist. I have volunteered four times now. I have been a pacer, a timer, handed out the finishing tokens and scanned the tokens. It is very rewarding to help out, enabling others to run.

It was due to running at Bromley parkrun that I got chatting to some Petts Wood Runners and ultimately joined the club.  Bromley parkrun is also an extremely friendly event with tea coffee, water, cakes and biscuits provided either home baked by the runners or purchased from donations. (To be honest every single parkrun I have been to is friendly)

The last couple of paragraphs may seem that an advert for parkrun and maybe they are, but I have not been asked to do this, and I haven't come across anybody who has a bad word to say about parkrun and I am sure 99.9% of parkrunners would agree that it is a great, fun initiative.

And to top it all, Bromley parkrun is not all about running with social events sometimes organised which usually involved beer and curry (the staple diet of any budding athlete)

So next objective is the C club, well it would be if I was Roman ;-)

Until the next time
TJH