Bognor Regis junior parkrun - 27.1.19 - Second Birthday!
Bognor’s ‘Arena Sports Centre’ is probably best known for hosting children’s birthday parties. But this Sunday the party was not for a person but for Bognor’s junior parkrun’s second anniversary. Rather than holding the party inside the party took place across the playing fields behind the Arena over a 2km timed course for 4 to 14 year olds. The celebrations featured; music provided by the dynamic duo Andrew Miles and Carl Bryant, runners not wearing party outfits but lycra enhanced with party hats, badges and balloons, and there was plenty of cake to go around when running was over.
Despite, the classic birthday bouncy castle not featuring, 33 children ran around with huge smiles on their faces and certainly had a great time. It was great to see a few new faces join in with the celebrations and running. Remembering the event is all about running, it is commendable to see seven new personal bests which shows how our juniors are improving their running skills. It certainly is a pleasure to see them run with such determination and commitment especially considering it is an early start on a Sunday and there was a fresh January breeze, which would have definitely blown out any lit candles!
Reflecting back over the statistics from the past two years, like all runners do, this event has taken place 95 times, nearly 1000 registered runners have joined in, 975 personal bests achieved and the course has an average run time of 13 minutes and 15 seconds. However, my favourite statistics from the two years of running is that 8748km have been covered by the children which is six times greater than Lands End to John O’Groats, greater than the radius of the moon and higher than Mount Everest. We am beginning to digress from the anniversary but there is certainly a lot to celebrate surrounding the second anniversary of this free event.
So finally and pertinently, it is important to celebrate and champion the volunteers who make this event possible and safe. Without their kindness and community spirit the event would not continue. We wonder how the statistics will look on the third anniversary and if you will feature amongst them?
By Harry and Martin Searle.