We are pleased to announce that the winner of the monthly Sweatshop prize for February is Margaret Mardall.

Since starting at parkrun Margaret has reduced her PB from 28:15 to 24:06, and is now one of the highest scoring age graded runners at Black Park. She is consistently recording over 80% in the VW60-64 category, which often outscores the event winners. For those of you unaware of age grading, it is your time expressed as a percentage of the world record for your age, and is one of the best ways for comparing performances between age group runners. Scoring over 80% puts you in quite an elite group of runners, and we felt that this achievement deserved recognition, and so we nominated Margaret for the monthly Sweatshop prize of a pair of running shoes of her choice.

Congratulations Margaret – let’s hope the new shoes improve your times even more.

Results This Week

Firstly apologies for the delay in publishing the results – there was a central problem that prevented all parkruns from uploading data to the main server for a couple of hours, but after some fevered investigations the issue was resolved.

We also had a discrepancy this week – we had 116 times taken on the timer but only 115 disks were handed out. We think we have narrowed down where this happened, but it does mean that we think that anybody who finish from position 79 onwards may find their time being corrected when we have a definitive answer.

Barcodes

There are still a considerable number of runners who are arriving without barcodes, some of whom have now done this on multiple occasions. Please make every effort to bring it with you – if you’re having problems printing it please get in touch as we can help. Can we also recommend leaving it in the car so that you don’t leave it at home when you wear a different jacket. If you’ve got more than one car print extra copies and leave one in each car 

Black Park parkrun Changes

As mentioned in a previous newsletter, in a few weeks time we will be moving the registration area from its current location to a new covered area which has just been built on the path that leads from the top of the car park to the start line. It’s located about 40 metres east of where the path crosses our finishing straight (about 30 meters from the finish). When we make the switch we will make some minor amendments to the course, moving the finish back a few yards onto the path giving you all a straight run-in, and moving the start back a few yards as well to compensate. The covered area will prevent some of the problems we’ve had with the computer when it has been raining, and will also give you all somewhere dry to wait before and after the race.

Once we’ve made the move and amended the course we will be liaising with the park rangers to get the course permanently marked.

Car Parking

As you may have seen from the notices, parking charges in Black Park are being increased from £2.00 to £2.50 on April 1st. It’s also worth noting that changes are being made to the annual car parking passes, and where previously a pass was available for individual parks at a cost of £30, these individual park passes are being discontinued leaving only an all-park pass at £45. We would therefore strongly recommend that you apply for an annual Black Park permit now at the original £30 price. We will have application forms available at the registration desk next week, or you can download one here: http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/assets/content/bcc/docs/countryside/parks/BP_Application_Form-updated0ct07.pdf

Race Report

With Black Park having dried considerably over the last week we were expecting some good times, and we weren’t disappointed with two age category records being broken  and 44 personal bests being set.

Leading the way home was Matthew Davenport of Maidenhead AC, winning for the third time in four appearances in a new SM30-34 age category record of 16:58, making him only the fourth man to break 17 minutes on the Black Park course. In second place was teammate Will Burkitt who recorded a new Black Park PB of 17:23, followed closely by Edward Donovan of San Domenico RRC who also set a PB of 17:27.

In the ladies race, Sarah Quantrill of Chiltern Harriers AC recorded her first win in a time of 19:48, also setting a new SF30-34 age category record and moving her to third on the Ladies all-time Black Park list. In second place was Kelly Burwood of Maidenhead AC who finished in 20:04, followed by Carin Hume of Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow AC in 20:08. These times moved Kelly and Carin to 4^th & 5^th respectively on the Ladies all-time list.

In the Age Graded competition, Maureen Fitzgerald recorded a performance of 78.29%, whilst top rated male runner was Matthew Davenport with 76.23%.

In the points competition Paul Hartigan has a lead of 46 points over second placed Richard Bacon. Barbro Julin leads Billy Bhamra by 85 in the ladies competition.

This week there were 13 first timers, and 44 runners recorded PBs, bringing the total number since the Black Park parkrun started to 780. In this time, 737 runners from 65 different clubs have completed the race 2886 times covering a distance of 14430 kilometers.

The male course record is held by Richard WARD who ran 16:33 on 29/08/09, event #7. The female equivalent is held by Tamsin NEALE who ran 19:32 on 25/07/09, event #2.

Volunteers

Welcome to two new volunteers this week, Peter Allen and Mike Worsfold. Thank you for your efforts today, you did a great job.

Lucozade Sport Roadshow

A big thank-you to Lucozade sports scientist Joel who brought along lots of advice and samples for everybody today. We hope you found his visit useful – he should be back again in the not-too-distant future.

Barcodes

Please make every effort to bring your barcode with you to all parkrun events – it speeds up the registration and also cuts down the amount of work required after the event to try and work out who all the missing runners are. Some of the parkrun events are now barcode only – if you don’t bring your barcode you’re recorded as an unknown athlete. Eventually all parkrun events will be this way, so it’s a good idea to get in the habit now.

If you don’t have a barcode yet you can find a personalised link to it in the post-run results e-mail you receive, and also in the weekly parkrun newsletter e-mail. Simply click the link in the e-mail and print the displayed screen.

If you’ve changed your e-mail address recently and are not receiving anything from parkrun please send an e-mail to updates@parkrun.com giving the full name you registered with, your date of birth, your home parkrun event and your club if applicable. There are nearly 60,000 runners in the database now so you’ll need to give us enough information to let us recognise you.

Car Parking

Annual car parking passes are available for BlackPark at a cost of £30. Application forms are available each week at the registration table.

Race Report

Today we welcomed 122 runners including 22 first timers to a rather soggy BlackPark. Fortunately the rain held off until late in the race when a brief shower passed over, but there were certainly plenty of puddles to splash through.

Peter Stainer of Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers continued to show his liking for BlackPark, making it 10 wins out of 10 races, this time finishing in 17:09. Will Burkitt of Maidenhead AC was second in 17:57, whilst Vince Ellerby of Gade Valley Harriers was third in 18:55.

In the ladies race, Debbie Wenman of Chiltern Harriers led home the field in 20:36. She was followed home by clubmate Judith Orr in 21:13, with Alison Allen of Burnham Joggers third in 23:59.

In today’s Age Graded competition Peter Stainer recorded a performance of 83.97%, closely followed by Margaret Mardall with 83.69%.

In the points competition Paul Hartigan has a lead of 84 points over Richard Bacon, whilst in the ladies competition Barbro Julin leads Billy Bhamra by 55.

Today there were 21 new personal bests set, bringing the total since we started to 736. Well done to all of you!

The course record is held by Richard Ward who ran 16:33 on 29/08/09, event #7. The ladies record is held by Tamsin Neale who ran 19:32 on 25/07/09, event #2.

Volunteers

A big thank-you to those who responded to our request for new volunteers last week. A few people have been in touch and we were pleased to welcome Clive Wickham to the team this week. You should see a few more new faces helping out in the next few weeks, but we'll always take more

Barcodes

Today nearly 20% of the field did not have barcodes with them, including people who have run every week since the new system was adopted. Please make every effort to ensure that you print it off and bring it with you - it can take a lot of time and effort after the event for the volunteers to manually find and insert all the missing runners. Some parkruns now only accept barcode results - if you don't have a barcode then you get recorded as an unknown athlete. We aren't quite this strict (yet!), but please make the effort to help. If you have problems printing your barcode for any reason then please get in touch and we will try to help.

A Word From Our Sponsors

Next Saturday the Lucozade Raodshow will be on-site to answer all your nutrition and hydration queries, and no doubt to hand out copious samples of their products. parkrun would not be the event it is today without the sponsorship of Lucozade, Sweatshop, Nike and The London Marathon, so please show them your appreciation next week.

Car Parking

Annual car park passes are available for Black Park at a cost of £30. Application forms are available from the registration table each week.

Race Report

The cold bright weather was perfect for a winter run in the park this morning, and one hundred runners and one very excited dog agreed and completed the course (although Everts the dog did manage to take something of a detour!). Twenty of these were first timers - we hope you enjoyed your run and that we'll see you again.

Running in his first Black Park event, Jon Morgan of Driffield Striders won in a time of 18:25. He was followed home by Vince Ellerby of Gade Valley Harriers who took 2nd place for the 6th time in 19:11. Jim O'Donovan of Burnham Joggers placed third in a time of 19:25.

In the ladies race Emilie Darmody finished first in 23:25. Second place went to Jennifer Adams of Datchet Dashers in 25:01, closely followed by Jennie Jupp in 25:05.

In today's Age Graded competition Maureen Fitzgerald recorded a performance of 78.57%, whilst top male was Jon Morgan with 77.56%.

In the points competition Paul Hartigan has a lead of 33 points over second placed Richard Bacon. Barbro Julin leads Billy Bhamra by 18 in the ladies competition.

18 runners recorded PBs, bringing the total number since the Black Park started to 715. In this time, 700 runners from 63 different clubs have completed the race 2648 times covering a distance of 13240 kilometers.

The male course record is held by Richard Ward who ran 16:33 on 29/08/09, event #7. The ladies record is held by Tamsin Neale who ran 19:32 on 25/07/09, event #2.

Vounteering

Black Park parkrun is fortunate in that it is one of the parkrun events that requires a relatively small number of volunteers to operate - at our current size we can operate comfortably with 5 or 6 volunteers per event. Recently however it appears to be the same faces turning out week after week to keep the event running. Whilst I'm sure they don't begrudge the time they give, it would be nice if more people stepped up to lend a hand so that the regulars can actually run from time to time. We currently have over 800 registered runners at Black Park of whom nearly 700 have actually run an event, but thus far a grand total of only 31 people have actually volunteered and turned up to help on a Saturday morning. Volunteering is not an arduous task, we won't expect you to operate the laptop on your first time, but if everybody volunteers just a couple of times a year it means that all helpers get to run on a regular basis. And we'll even give you 100 points for each of the first three times you volunteer.
So please click on the Volunteer tab at the top of this page or drop an e-mail to black-parkHelpers@parkrun.com and help us keep this event running smoothly.

Barcodes

The switch to barcoding last week was a big success - the queues were substantially shorter even though nearly 30% of the field didn't have barcodes. This week the number without barcodes was even smaller at 15% which was great. You may have noticed however that I was having to type in the barcode numbers by hand at the finish. This was because for some reason the USB sockets on the laptop decided to stop working thus disabling the scanner just as the first runner arrived. Rather than make the runners wait whilst I rebooted the machine I decided to type in the barcode numbers by hand, and the good news is that even this method is far faster than using the old method of having to look everybody up by name, and hopefully the laptop malfunction will not be something that happens again. At some point in the next few weeks we will also be introducing barcoded finishing disks which should speed things up even more - two quick scans and you're done.

Lucozade Roadshow

The Lucozade Sports Scientists will be visiting Black Park for the first time on February 27th, so if you have any queries regarding nutrition or hydration then they will be only too happy to talk to you about them.

News from Black Park

Some of you may have noticed the new toilet block that is now open closer to the start, and that there is still some construction work going on nearby. This is construction for a new attraction due to open in March called Go Ape, a high wire forest adventure. The good news for parkrun is that a large covered area is due to be built behind the Go Ape office, and it looks likely that we will be able to move our operations to this covered area. It will probably mean a minor change to the course to move the finish back up the path to a more suitable point, but it does mean that we will be less susceptible to the weather, and that runners will have somewhere dry to gather before and after the race.

We are also liasing with the Park Rangers to have the course permenantly marked. This will be of great benefit as it means that runners will be able to run the marked course 7 days a week, and it will also make it easier to mark the course each Saturday, something that currently entails trying to hammer signs into very stony ground.

Car Parking

Annual car park passes are available for Black Park at a cost of £30. Application forms are available from the registration table each week.

Race Report

A cold crisp morning greeted 98 runners in Black Park, and with conditions underfoot being much improved we expected some good times. And we weren't disappointed with 33 runners recording their best Black Park times. We also had 12 runners making their Black Park debut, and it was one of these, Mark Fallowfield-Smith of Chiltern Harriers AC, who ran away from the field to finish first in a time of 18:15. Vince Ellerby of Gade Valley Harriers finished second for the 5th time in 19:02, whilst third place went to Kevin Rose in 19:09.

In the ladies race Tamsin Neale of Burnham Joggers maintained her 100% record at Black Park with her 5th win in five starts, finishing only 2 seconds away from her own course record in 19:34.Second place went to Yolanda Edwards of Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow AC in 20:40, whilst Gillian McAlister recorded a new Black Park PB of 22:11 in third place. Burnham Joggers have a bit of a stranglehold on the ladies race at the moment, having won for the last 6 weeks.

Two new age category records were also set today, with Charlotte Johnson setting a new JW14 record of 24:20, whilst Maureen Fitzgerald of Thames Valley Harriers set a new VM65-69 record of 27:25. Well done to both of you

In the age-graded competition Margaret Mardall (VW60-64) ran an excellent 83.57%, whilst top male competitor was Jim O'Donovan (VM45-49) of Burnham Joggers who ran a time worth 75.82%.

In the points competition Richard Bacon has a lead of 47 points over Paul Hartigan, whilst in the ladies event Barbro Julin of Marlow Striders has an 8 point lead over Billy Bhamra of Datchet Dashers.