Saturday’s sizable parkrun contingent was greeted with a wonderful sunny summer morn, (hard to recall the last time that happened) and were rewarded too with some terrific runs. Thomas Martin got things off to a flying start, zooming around the three laps of the Botanical Gardens in 16:24, close to his personal best. He was followed by two of parkrun’s consistently quick finishers in George Targett on 20:29 and Glenn Taylor, the 3rd runner across on 21:20
Clair Brien was the first of the female runners over the line in 24:04; of course Clair is mentioned in these dispatches pretty regularly for her terrific efforts. Next was Megan Horgan at 24:18 and Jodi Oakman on 25:01. ‘Well Done!’ to all of them.
A quite remarkable feature of Saturday’s run was that the Castlemaine Parkrun crew were visited by a contingent of ‘out of town’ volunteers, mostly from Kerang, who had decided to rock up and offer their assistance – something they do quite regularly and apparently now quite a ‘thing’ among the wider parkrun community. It was lovely to have these stalwarts of parkrun join the local group, offer their services, and mingle with the super friendly Castlemaine crowd.
Their efforts were of course matched by our own local volunteer group consisting of Christine Christie, Dianne Cox, Geoff Faircloth, Michael Farr, Jane Harding, Lynette Hills, Ross Jarvis, Amanda Lake, Thomas Martin, Oliver Moynihan, and David Reidie.
Dianne was Run Director and Jane the volunteer wrangler, but the group also contained some terrific runners who elected to forgo a run and assist with staging the event instead. Thanks to all of them for their terrific, and quite selfless work. It is appreciated.
There was a decent crop of PBs too and Elliot Hutchinson kicked off these with his time of 23:04.
Damian Paynter at 24:20, Melissa Waddington in only her 2nd run completed the course in 26:33 and Rachel Kennedy 37:49 was the last of the Personal Best runners.
Parkrun is a completely free event, there are no charges, no levies, and no membership fees – all you need to do is register online (again, free) and then turn up at the BBQ carpark at the Botanical Gardens a bit before the 8am briefing. Organisers would love to see you. And don’t fret about being slow, or not being able to run the course – plenty of people walk the three laps and they’re every bit a part of our parkrun community as the best of the runners. So, get along and join in.