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.

BOGNOR REGIS JUNIOR PARKRUN 25 NOVEMBER 2018

RUN REPORT
BY HENRY KEARNS
AGE 5

I ran parkrun today, I got my yellow wrist band as I have run 21 junior parkruns. I finished 14th out of 27 runners in my best time of 12 minutes 49. I helped my Dad and Daniel (the run director) to put the cones out to mark the route. I took chocolates for everyone to eat. The grass was really, really, really soggy. I love running parkrun with my Dad.

There were 10 new personal best times and one new first timer. The first finisher was Michael Rowe.

It was a chilly Sunday morning on 04/11/18. However that didn’t stop our 36 runners for this week, with Max Gayle coming in first position and a new PB. This was one of the 8 new PB’s! With 3 first timers it was a successful morning. Well done everyone.

Esme Kelly

It was a ghostly cold morning, but nothing evil was lurking from the park, 36 children dressed as witches, ghouls, skeletons, wonder woman & woody turned up to complete the 2k monster dash.  Frankie(nstein) was presented his ultra marathon wristband, well done!

After completing the warm up we ran around our local haunt, these children ain't scared of no ghosts.  No tricks, just treats at the finish with Emily Carman finishing first in a time of 07:55.  2 people got PBs including my little brother.  Welcome to our 5 first timers, we hope you found it thrilling.  Well done everyone and thanks to all the Marshalls and volunteers too.  Happy Halloween!

So today was the end of an era as I was Run Director at Bognor Regis junior parkrun for the last time.
To think this all kicked off back in April 2016 when myself and my core team put the wheels in motion to start up this event.
Nine months later, we had managed to raise the funds and find a suitable location to hold the weekly event.  In Jan 2017 with the help of some fantastic volunteers, and despite the freezing cold weather conditions, we held a successful inaugural event with an impressive turnout of over 100 kids.
Over the past 20 months we've staged some great events for the kids including Wear a Football Shirt event, Mother's and Father's day celebrations, Halloween, Wear a Christmas Hat event, A Cubs/Scouts and Beavers event and we even managed to takeover the main parkrun at Hotham Park one Saturday. Seeing over 250 runners join in with the "gorilla stomp" and "reaching for the sun" for our juniors warm up was a real treat!
We've experienced really hot, sweaty summer runs, ridiculously wet and windy autumnal runs and freezing cold winter runs, but the kids are ALWAYS smiling!
I know we go on about it a lot but the volunteers play such a big part of the day and if it wasn't for them, the event just couldn't happen. Today was my 70th time volunteering and every event I've covered at junior parkrun has been a joy to be a part of. It's been wonderful meeting, and getting to know, all of the kids and their parents. I will truly miss being part of the core team (and the cakes) it's been an amazing experience and something I hope will continue to grow in the future.

#loveparkrun #parkrunfamily