Castlemaine Parkrun love to celebrate ‘Milestones’ and on Saturday we had an incredible milestone to celebrate.
Shane Renfrey completed his 300th event. The vast majority of these have been on his home course, Shane estimates over 280, and he is able to boast of being a participant in our very first ever parkrun.
He was welcomed on the day with the traditional run-through of our ‘Tunnel of Love’ before setting of on his 300th – which he knocked off in the great time of 32:02.
The whole Castlemaine Parkrun community extends its warmest regards to Shane on what is, by any measure, a great achievement.
Our numbers were down fractionally on Saturday with a lot of people running in an event in another town. Even so, we had 83 people run, walk or stroll our beautiful botanic gardens course and quite a few of these were able to boast PBs at the end.
First across was Fil Wos in his first run at Castlemaine. He finished in 18:31 and was followed four seconds later by Thomas Read with Johnny Horrocks third in 20:31.
The first of our female runners was Lauren Barker in 24:13 with Jodi Oakman next on 25:58 and Tracy Marsh in only her third event and her first ever on our course finishing the three laps in 27:19.
We were pleased to greet four new parkrunners on the day. Micah Hamilton completed the course in 26:28 with Lyla Muir at 32:59, Annika Kearton 42:29, and Sophie Leversha 42:30 – hopefully we’ll see lots more of this quartet of new parkrunners in future.
Our volunteer contingent performed brilliantly as usual. Saturday’s crew was comprised of Karina Taylor as Run Director, Michael Constable completed the required course inspection, before heading off to complete his parkrun, Peter Reade, Glen Taylor, Mandy Foyster, Robyn English, Kerrye Rogers, and Jane Harding doubling as volunteer coordinator and photographer. Our thanks to the team for their terrific efforts add for keeping everything ticking over so smoothly.
If you’d like to join us for parkrun, all you need to do is register online and print a barcode. Then simply turn up on Saturday at the BBQ carpark at the Botanical Gardens a bit before our 8am briefing. We’d love to see you.