Run Report Event No 792 – 8 June 2019

Posted on June 13, 2019 by bushyoffice

Graced By Dame Kelly

This week, we were honoured to host a moving tribute to Milo Little, whose friends, family, classmates and teachers from Raynes Park High School were meeting to run / walk in memory of Milo and to raise money for CLIC Sargent. Milo was sadly lost to cancer last year, and this week he would have celebrated his 16th birthday. Anyone wishing to donate to CLIC Sargent can do so here:-

https://www.justgiving.com/remember/679768/Milo-Little

Family, friends, classmates and teachers of Milo Little

The event was organised by teacher Ben Smith, who was adding to the challenge by carrying a 50 lb rucksack.

Supporters of Milo approaching the big oak.

To the delight of many of us, we were visited by a pretty good runner from Tonbridge; Dame Kelly Holmes was taking part in the filming of a documentary in the park.

Warming up ready to field the adoration of the 1265!

Dame Kelly took time out to meet regulars and visitors; those born after Athens 2004 and many who can still remember those amazing heroics vividly!

British Athletics’ First Lady talks to Parkrun’s First Man

Run director Rob Phillips on his best behaviour today as his boss (Dame Kelly) was around! Addressing the 1265 strong field prior to the event.

First Timers

167 were taking part in their first parkrun at Bushy today, (over 14% of the registered field) of which 50 were brand new to Parkrun.

One of the first timers today was Bala from Malaysia (where they currently have 2 parkrun venues)

The magnificent Riverside Rebels provided 3 of the first timers completing their couch to 5K programme today; Congratulations to Sally, Karen and Lucy, hope to see you back here for more!

Milestones

No new members joined the 500 or 250 club today. However, John Clifton from Arrow Valley parkrun marked his 300^th run by making the trip down from the midlands with fellow runners from Arrow Valley and Redditch.

There were 4 runners joining the 100 club this week; Congratulations to:-

Vicky Webb

Andrew Limbrick

John Altman

Charley Stephens (First timer at Bushy)

Actor John Altman overcomes knee pain to complete his first parkrun for nearly 2 years to join the 100 club and claim the privilege of a photo with Nick Blanchard!

50

Paul Angulo

Jamie Baird

Marianne Wyles (first timer at Bushy – her 50 runs have been achieved acrossed 48 Venues!)

10

Joe Wilson

Rebecca Turpin (first timer at Bushy!)

More Visitors…

Fellow “moonrakers” (that’s a citizen of Wiltshire) from the City of Salisbury Athletics Club

Visitors from Huddersfield & Preston Parkruns

Lesley from Woodley parkrun

Visitors from Lincolnshire and Newark

The Run

Fairly blustery today (maybe costing 15 – 20 valuable seconds to my time?). However, there were still some super speedy performances today:-

First Men

1. Elliot Dorey 15:44

2. Will Woodcock 16:00

3. Simon Baines 16:32

First Women

1. Mara Yamauchi 18:31

2. Charlotte Ragan 19:04

3. Alice Patterson 19:26

Boys

1. Yann Sydow 19:16

2. Adam Conway 19:47

3. Ryan Lynch 20:41

Girls

1. Isabel Melbourne 22:40

2. Ellena Deakin 24:43

3. Abigail Shackleton 26:03

Bushy Personal Bests

119 achieved today; quite an achievement in this wind, particularly by the following members of the 250 and the 100 club:-

Michael Hickey (321 runs) 19:59

Richard Lyons (276 runs) 24:57

Catherine Stephens (120 runs) 23:55

Eirwen Campbell (112 runs) 23:46

Denise Von Roretz (112 runs) 29:54

And Finally…

My dog Daisy uses her considerable spaniel strength to drag my wife (Rowena) and my daughter (Rowena) into this week’s run report!

See you on Saturday...

Chris Brimacombe

Don't forget you can now follow us on Instagram
intagram.com/bushyparkrun

Twitter at www.twitter.com/bushyparkrun
and for Bushy parkrun on facebook
www.facebook.com/bushyparkrun

and for parkrun UK on facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/parkrunuk
Interested in volunteering at Bushy parkrun? Please e-mail bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

Want to give feedback? Have anything to say or want anyone mentioned in future run reports? Please e-mail bushyoffice@parkrun.com

Run Report Event No 779 – 9 March 2019

Posted on March 12, 2019 by bushyoffice

Firstly, apologies that this is out so late. I really did mean to get this done by Sunday afternoon but we've recently changed TV packages so we now have Sky Sports & BT Sports at home... and what with the Six Nations Rugby and then Premiership Rugby, a bit of Chelsea v Wolves followed by Man Utd v Arsenal followed by T20 cricket and then to finish Sunday evening off Jo Konta was playing tennis in Indian Wells, it all seemed to have slipped away from me. And then my current life partner returned from a weekend away and asked me to do a 13 mile run with her on Monday evening and lovely though it was to spend nearly two hours on the mean streets of Teddington with her, I really didn't feel like writing much after that. And then today, you know... Brexit!

Anyway, on with the report. So is it Spring or is still the depths of winter? One minute it's warm and sunny, the next it feels like winter in Narnia. While it certainly felt like a pretty chilly wind out there for those of us running... it was apparently 'flipping cold marshalling at Teddington gate' according to another Rob on Facebook. He also said 'A big thanks to everyone who gave a "thank you marshalls". It makes a difference in the cold."

All 51 of our volunteers were amazing yesterday as always and while we couldn't get a picture of everyone (we really must try that one week) I did manage to get a pic of our crack team of Volunteer Co-ordinators during the calm before the storm.

Alex, Lucy & Jack - our wonderful VCs

At least we weren't running on Sunday morning or we might have been in danger of our first ever weather related cancellation at Bushy, the wind was so bad at one point that the park was actually closed due to the danger of falling branches and trees. We were worried over at Hanworth juniors that the wind was so strong some of the smaller ones might actually blow away...

By the way, I'm not really sure what's happened with the photos this week. I couldn't upload high resolution ones and I appear to have pressed the 'make them all really rubbish' quality by mistake.

A proper good news story

Andy, Penny, Colin, Bernie & John

For most people 26th January was a normal day but for the people in the picture above it was anything but. Colin (middle of pic) was doing his first ever parkrun but unfortunately at the 3.5km mark he suffered a cardiac arrest. Luckily for Colin, just behind him on the day was Bernie (pink top) who was also at Bushy parkrun for the first time, as a visitor from Rickmansworth parkrun. Luckily for Colin again, Bernie was a nurse, recognised what had happened and knew exactly what to do. Bernie took charge of the situation and along with other parkrunners, started chest compressions and ensured that an ambulance was called.

At the same time, our emergency procedures kicked in and Andy received a call on the emergency phone that all Run Directors dread... All parkruns across the country must have an AED (defibrillator) as part of their kit and getting this to the scene of an incident as quickly as possible is absolutely crucial in saving lives. As you can tell from the picture above, Andy was able to get it their quickly, Bernie put it to good use and they were able to hand him over to the paramedics in a position where they were able to save his life. I don't think anyone would mind me saying there were a few tears when they all met up yesterday morning.

On behalf of everyone at Bushy parkrun, I really do want to say a huge thank you to Bernie, Andy and everyone else who was involved in saving Colin's life...

In Other News

Huge congratulations to Debbie King for completing her 250th parkrun at Bushy on Saturday. There was no way we were going to miss celebrating this achievement as we were bombarded with messages from various friends to say could we mention it at the start of the run! It sounded like she had plenty of friends with her as Ray's shout out at the start seemed to get one of the biggest cheers I've ever heard at the start line at Bushy! Debbie started parkrunning back in 2013 and has completed 234 runs at Bushy with Old Deer Park being her second most favoured run with nine. We hope you had a great day and the t-shirt comes soon!

Debbie with the new selfie frame!

Continuing the milestone theme, huge congratulations also to Julie Owen for completing her 100th run yesterday and humouring me by celebrating with a pic in our selfie frame... Of her 100 runs, 92 were at Bushy Park and a little look at the running challenges website tells me that Julie achieved 'silver level obsessive' status in 2017 by running more than 40 parkruns in one year!

Julie also with the frame

In other milestone news this week, Chloe COLLINS & Patrick TIERNAN joined the 250 club. Chloe looks like she might be a bit of a tourist and was celebrating her 250th with a first visit to Bushy while Patrick started running at Bushy back in 2007 and has completed 245 runs at Bushy in that time.

Joining the 100 club alongside Julia were Paul HUTCHINGS, Trevor GRANT, Tegid LEWYS-LLOYD & Scott HILLMAN and joining the 50 club were Pete STYLES, Blaise JENNINGS, Caroline HOPKINS, Marianne FRYER, George RUTHERFORD, Rebecca SLEAP & Andrew WHITBREAD.

And last but by no means least, juniors joining the 10 club were Maisie WHALEY, Jasmine GILKES & Zac HOUGHTON

This week 1371 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 157 were first timers and 112 recorded new Personal Bests

The Results Bit

Making her first appearance at Bushy, Charlotte EARL crossed the line as first lady in a time of 18:44 with a bit of a gap behind to Kelly DICKS in 19.29. Rebecca SLEAP rounded out the top three in 19.48 on her first visit to Bushy.

We also had two first timers to Bushy in the first three men to finish today, Richard LOVEJOY was first to brave the nasty headwind on the home straight to break the tape in 16.22, closely followed by Harry LAWSON in 16.45. Both of these gents are experienced parkrunners but decided to make the journey for the first time to the home of parkrun on Saturday. Completing the virtual podium was Tom TWEDDELL in 17.03.

The top three junior girls were Juliet DRURY, Iris BROWN & Poppy MITCHELL

For the junior boys the top three were Jonny BROOK, Matthew David TYAS and William STARK

And finally in the results bit, huge congratulations to the following eight people who achieved an amazing 80% age grading or above this week, five women and three men with ages ranging from 15-17 up to 65-69.

A new Volunteer Role at Bushy

The eagle eyed among you may have noticed in the excellent monthly volunteer update that parkrun HQ send out that they have added a new volunteer role to the system that we're keen to add here. Basically it's called Event Day Course Checker and it involves someone checking out the whole course before the start and reporting back to the Run Director that all is okay before the start. It's ideal for those of you want to run and also volunteer as you can do as part of your warm up or if you cycle here, you might want to do an extra lap of the course to check all is well and there are no obstructions on the course or anything else that the RD might need to know about. If you fancy doing this one week, just drop us a mail at bushy@parkrun.com although I think the first couple of weeks have been snapped up already!

Some more photos

To finish, here are a few more photos that I managed to get on Saturday morning, as you can tell I didn't move too far with our trusty new - albeit slightly muddy - selfie frame.

First up are Clare, James and I'm pretty sure Jaden. James was here on the day parkrun began back in 2004 and has clocked up 530 parkruns in total and Clare actually has the joy of working for parkrun - and also confided on Saturday that Bushy was her favourite parkrun of all despite the fact she's only run at Bushy seven times and at Old Deer Park a whopping 76 times!

Little Stoke tourists at the home of parkrun!

Next up are the Riverside Rebels, a local running group who are regulars at Bushy!

James again with Paul Radmann who is a Run Director over in Germany with 39 runs at the beautiful Küchenholz parkrun!

We had a wonderful group who took the train down from Carlisle on Friday just to do Bushy parkrun. The wonderful group of DH Runners had a fantastic time and were last see in the Pheasantry enjoying the full Bushy experience - I hope you were given some tokens to sort!

And these guys... I'm really sorry but I can't remember who you were, but you were lovely and I know you enjoyed your morning at Bushy!

Instagram

By the way, did you know we are on Instagram? Follow us at https://www.instagram.com/bushyparkrun/ for some of our most lovely pictures!

See you all on Saturday when I'll be the bloke in the blue & white hi-viz with the microphone.

Rob

Run Report Event No 777 – 23 February 2019

Posted on February 25, 2019 by bushyoffice

All change in the funnel

The theme of this morning's run was Fog - would there be light at the end of the 'new funnel'?

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed a slight variation on the normal funnel formation. We now have a funnel that is more of a 'cane shape' than a horse shoe thus ending earlier than expected. I wonder how many others, like me, got caught out this morning happily chatting not realising that I was already at the token 'distribution point'. Sorry token team, I will be ready with my hand out next week.

Talking of the funnel, I met a lady today whilst queuing, who had been given a letter, and she had walked down the funnel to find someone to give it to, not realising what it was for! This was the lady's first time, and as she crossed the line, someone had thrust a laminated letter into her hand - confusion completely understandable. For anyone unsure how it all works, the funnel is a beautiful, well oiled machine with 'gates'. Because of the swelling ranks of Bushy parkrun runners, it is necessary to have a 'double funnel' to stop the queue backing over the finish line. So, when Ray is able to spot a gap between runners, the 'gate' is closed on one funnel and opened on the other. In order to keep your well earned position, the first person switching lanes gets a letter. These are given out in alphabetical order and the funnels are then emptied, also in alphabetical order. All clear now?!

Basically the rule is, if you get a letter, keep hold of it and as you approach the token team, hold it up high so they can see it. Other 'golden rules' of the funnel are 'stay in the order you finished'. This is because you are timed as you cross the finish line and the token you are then given at the end of the funnel corresponds with that time. Please, if you cross the finish line, stay in the funnel even if you don't have your barcode. If you leave the funnel, then that means that the time of everyone behind you will be out. If you know you are in a rush and don't have time to queue, just dip out to the side at the finish and your time won't be clocked. Simples!

If you don't have your barcode, and do cross the finish line, stay in the funnel and just drop your token into the box held by more volunteers at the end of the funnel. Remember, no barcode means no result. However, if you make a note of your number, you can still see what time you registered when the results come out (you will though be an unknown runner, we can't change that).

Enough of rules.........

Hunting for tourists in the fog I found a trio from Hook Runners - welcome Caroline, Mikita and Lisa.

I also met Sarah from Melbourne, but somehow forgot to take her photo. apologies Sarah, I hope you enjoyed your morning.

Bobby Bear, the class bear from St Stephen's School in St Margarets was raring to start his parkrun with friend Mel.

Julie from New South Wales was here today to run her first ever Parkrun. As she was sporting a Chelsea hat, I thought she would would 'love' to have her photograph taken with Steve, a well known Man. City supporter - she looks delighted! Isn't it nice how parkrun brings people together!! Have fun at Wembley on Sunday both of you!!

This is Georgia - no explanations needed, it's all on her back!

Sarah and Richard joined us today from Exeter Riverside Parkrun - this was Richard's 50th run, so congratulations, hope you enjoyed it

These interesting T-Shirts caught my eye. This is Tony and Alison, part of 'Band on the Run' a group of runners formed from the Wyton Royal Airforce Band in Huntingdon. Their running group started 3 years ago and now has 25 members made up from musicians and family members. Alison, I'm sorry I only took a photo of your back!

Another big field today 1459 - the first timer's briefing is getting bigger and bigger.

The fog was still quite heavy as we started out, but didn't dampen our spirits.

The front runners coming out of the mist.

As we cross the line, the fog has started to lift and there is a glimpse of a nice day to come.

A penny for the thoughts of the two sensible people sitting down as we all puff and pant past them to the finish.

This way Verity!!

The new funnel of course works like a dream - thanks as always to Ray and the funnel team

A happy bunch of tourists at the finish - Norfolk Gazelles

Another group who obviously enjoyed their run today were runners from Peckham Rye - Happy 60th to Butch (in the frame).

The results bit....

1st home was Harvey Dixon in a truly impressive 14:58. Congratulations on your 86.19% age rated performance. Harvey joins the exclusive group of just 28 individuals to have broken 15 minutes at Bushy Park.
1st lady home was Hannah Irwin visiting us from Cambridge finishing in 16:59 with a 87.14% age rating. Well done Hannah!

In ideal running conditions, two age category records fell. Congratulations to Geraldine SCHAER who ran home in 19:18 to break the VW50-54 age category record with a 89.03% rating. Well done to Robert MCHARG whose impressive time of 17:21 and 88.57% was another age category best for VM55-59.

16 further impressive runs of over 80% to drool over were:

Laurence DUFFY 18:20 86.00%
Rachael WHEELER 22:05 85.43%
Polly ADAMS 20:43 84.07%
Fran KENDEN 24:34 83.79%
Deborah STEER 21:30 83.10%
Marcus SOLOMON 19:01 83.00%
Lily O'NEILL 19:40 82.80%
Stephen POND 17:59 82.02%
Robert BATCHELOR 17:41 81.43%
Peter MITCHELL 17:30 81.05%
Jessica MAYER 19:08 81.01%
Rowena STENT 25:29 80.77%
Emma HARRIS 20:33 80.62%
Merran SELL 29:33 80.60%
Brigid HIBBERD 21:54 80.52%
Imogen DEAKIN 19:17 80.38%

Congratulations in particular to Bushy Park regular Michael Wilkins who achieve a PB of 21:07 at his Bushy Park run number 202. Sub 21 minutes next week Michael?

Milestones this week...

Included 7 athletes who achieved their super red 50 milestone tee-shirt.

Lucy CARTER
Lyla BAKER
Richard TAFFLER
Madeleine REARDON
Charlotte MCGEE
Elaine BRUCE
A special mention to Walid ZERHOUNI who celebrated with a PB as well.

3 athletes gained their coveted black 100 Milestone tee-shirt; Oliver MELBOURNE, Sharon O LEARY and also with a PB to celebrate Kevan BALDRY - well done all.

A further 3 athletes can look forward to joining the green 250 tee-shirt club. Well done Colin COBURN, Candice GODDARD and Paddy FITZPATRICK

No 500 milestones this week, but hopefully next week - Liz?

Finally, a very special milestone for the Riding family - Keith, Verity, daughter Zoe and her husband Mohammed who chalked up a family milestone of 1000 parkruns between them - what a great achievement.

Thanks as always to the fantastic volunteers this morning, who were:

Stuart AMORY, Katie BARLOW, Jude BENNETT, Jack BENNETT, Phil BLUER, Chris BRIMACOMBE, Steve CARPENTER, Helen CARPENTER, Luca CERASALE, Ray COWARD, Alex FERGUSSON, Ray FRANKS, Janice FRANKS, Charlotte FRASER, Robert FREY, Christine FRY, Nicola GOSCOMB, Stella HAMMOND, Finley HARRISON, Robby HEDGES, Bianca HOLLIS, Melanie HOWES, Emilie HOWES, Gabriel HUXLEY-JENNINGS, Stephen IGGLESDEN, Rob S JONES, Samuel JONES, Clare LE VOIR, Angela MACSON, Hayden MATTHEWS, Fiona MCANENA, Steve MILLER, Richard MOORE, Eoin PARFITT, Ella PATEL, Keith RIDING, Ian RILEY, Nick SAVILL, Anna SAVILL, James SELL, Andrew STENT, Carol SWAFFER, Sharon TEE, Beth TEMPEST, Alex TICKELL, Andrew John WINGATE, Emma WINGATE, Fran WYLDE.

See you all next week

Stella Hammond

We have just launched our Bushy parkrun Instagram site. Please use #bushyparkun when you post your photos instagram.com/bushyparkrun

Don't forget you can now follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/bushyparkrun
and for Bushy parkrun on facebook
www.facebook.com/bushyparkrun

and for parkrun UK on facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/parkrunuk
Interested in volunteering at Bushy parkrun? Please e-mail bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

Want to give feedback? Have anything to say or want anyone mentioned in future run reports? Please e-mail bushyoffice@parkrun.com

Christmas and New Year Runs

Posted on December 20, 2018 by bushyoffice

Here at Bushy parkrun Towers we're all very excited by the upcoming Christmas festivies, especially as it gives us the opportunity to do FIVE parkruns in just over a week. All parkruns at Bushy start at 9am and details of all parkruns over the festive period are below:

22nd December - parkrun as normal
25th December - Christmas Day parkrun! Mulled wine, mince pies and fancy festive Christmas dress
29th December - parkrun as normal
1st January - New Year's Day parkrun

NYD is the only opportunity in the year to do more than one parkrun in a day. Following Bushy at 9am you might want to consider Kingston at 10am or Crane Park at 10.30am

If you're travelling this Christmas and New Year, the parkrun Christmas Compendium lets you know where you can get your parkrun fix across the UK:
http://www.parkrun.org.uk/special-events/

We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year

Run Report Event No 752 – 15 September 2018

Posted on September 26, 2018 by bushyoffice

The Perfect Antidote To The End Of Summer

Apparently, the second Monday of September is considered to be the second most depressing day of the year behind Blue Monday (3rd Monday in January) due to factors such as the end of summer and the long stretch until our next holiday. Could that be a contributing factor as to why there were a bumper 1,392 runners (the 8th highest ever turnout at Bushy) turning up to our stunning Royal Park for a perfect pick-me-up?
Run Director Emma Wingate delivers the briefing with her usual upbeat enthusiasm
Alternatives to parkrun do exist in Bushy Park, but you may find them a bit of a drag and find yourself making little headway!

Nothing gloomy about the 35 brightly attired members of the ASL (the American School in London), who could be seen carrying out some impressive warm up routines before the start.

Even more distinctive were the Hawaiian shirts worn by Patrick Gleeson and his friends Colin and Mike who were celebrating Pat’s membership to the 250 club. All except 1 of Patrick’s parkruns have been at Bushy.

Josh Smith also qualified for his green top today.

Nichola Shervell had a triple celebration. 100th parkrun, 40th Birthday and a staggering PB taking more than 90 seconds off her previous best time at bushy.
Team Bushy’s Karen Wallace enjoys some fizz after completing her 100th parkrun in what was her 2nd paciest time.

Also joining the 100 club this week were John Cheal and Joshua Low.

First Timers

This week 76 runners undertook their first ever registered parkruns at Bushy, and this included this fabulous family of four who were visiting from Florida.Gary, Ivette, Nadia and Naomi complete their first ever parkrun. Welcome aboard!

Pacers

The 3rd week of an odd month meant we were treated to “odd minute” pacers, no doubt contributing to the mightily impressive 205 PB’s achieved. The below shows the pacer line-up today and the corresponding line-up just over 4 years ago, capturing the 2 occassions when young Floss has stepped up to the mark and put in two highly accurately paced runs.
As well as odd minute pacers, Ian Fullen ran as a personal pacer for Zoe Faiz who was looking to add to the trio of recent PB’s that she has impressively achieved (not bad for someone who chalked off more than 300 parkruns!)

However, this week Zoe was definitely overshadowed by her mum Verity Riding today who took 21 seconds off her PB on her 283rd appearance at Bushy. Many congratulations Verity, great achievement!

A quick reminder that our parkrun events are totally dependent on securing a team of volunteers; there’s a wide range of roles to choose from, it’s great fun and you get to meet lots of great people and the gratitude from the participants makes it an incredibly uplifting experience. So, to the uninitiated, I would strongly urge you to Send Pat an email at bushyhelpers@parkrun.com
Apologies for the late publishing of this report; happily, we were blessed with a new addition to our family last week, hopefully the little lady will be a future parkrunner!

Chris Brimacombe

Photo credits: Jed Leicester

Don't forget you can now follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/bushyparkrun
and for Bushy parkrun on facebook
www.facebook.com/bushyparkrun

and for parkrun UK on facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/parkrunuk
Interested in volunteering at Bushy parkrun? Please e-mail bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

Want to give feedback? Have anything to say or want anyone mentioned in future run reports? Please e-mail bushyoffice@parkrun.com

Run Report Event No 738 – 9 June 2018

Posted on June 13, 2018 by bushyoffice

Well that was all rather good fun wasn't it?

Bushy parkrun was one of over three hundred parkruns across the UK that took part in the #NHS70 celebrations. Apart from the dressing up - which we'll get too shortly - there was a slightly more serious side to the day which involved raising the awareness of parkrun within the NHS. Judging by the amount of tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram stories I saw coming from within the NHS it seems parkruns across the country achieved that, so a huge thank you to everyone who took part on Saturday.

As you can see from the photo below, we had a great turn out of people who really embraced the fancy dress element of the day.

And it wasn't just the humans who got dressed up. Someone from parkrun HQ clearly spotted Mollie the Collie in a picture and added her to their Instagram feed!

'Doctor' Simon was in charge on Saturday and he set everyone off from the top of his ladder at 9am sharp.

This week 1266 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 108 were first timers and 138 recorded new Personal Bests. We also had 23 people back for that difficult second parkrun... We hope everyone had a great time and we look forward to welcoming you back to Bushy again soon!

Volunteers

A HUGE thank you to all the volunteers for giving their time on Saturday morning so that over 1250 people could have their weekly parkrun fix. We're always on the lookout for more volunteers, we give you full training and it really can be quite good fun so if you'd like to help one week, simply drop the fantastic Pat a line at bushyhelpers@parkrun.com - many thanks to the following hi-viz heroes this week.

Jacob ATKINSON, Ray BAIRSTOW, Joy BELL, Mila BOKONJIC, Eva BOYD, Debbie BUTLER, Ray COWARD, Ann COWARD, Robert John DEAN, Mike DENNISON, Jonathan DICKINSON, Lorraine DILLAMORE, Janice FRANKS, Ray FRANKS, Christine FRY, Joanne GREEN, Keith HAWORTH, Melanie HOWES, Emilie HOWES, John HUTCHINGS, Lucy KATESMARK, Simon LANE, Margaret LE FRANC, Courtney LE FRANC, Catelin LE FRANC, Ally MANOLE, Jackie MCLELLEN, Robert MOREY, James MORRIS, Darrell NEWMAN, Martin NICHOLDS, Hannah PICKUP, Kit POWNEY, Simon R, Nicole RIEHL, Wendy ROBERTSON, James SELL, Julie SMITH, Emily May STAIN, Wendy STOKES, Carol SWAFFER, Malcolm J TAYLOR, Sharon TEE, Lucy THATCHER, Ben THERON, Mike TIVNEN, Harry VAUGHAN, Maisy VINCENT, Carole VINE

Milestones

Congratulations to Sue Howarth for joining the 250 club on Saturday and celebrating in true Bushy style with cakes, 250 themed biscuits and prosecco! 194 of Sue's 250 runs have been at Bushy with the rest spread over a large number of parks across the UK as Sue and Andy tour their way around the country.

Joining the 100 Club were Krzysztof DANIELAK on their first ever visit to Bushy and Jon DAWSON who has run 88 times at Bushy. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to catch up with Krzysztof but looking at his profile it looks like his home run is Zary in Poland - a very popular overseas parkrun for those looking to complete their parkrun alphabet!

We had a whole bunch of people joining the 50 club on Saturday, so huge congratulations to:
Rupert POSTLETHWAITE, Becky POSTLETHWAITE, Holly ANDREWS, Sandy ARMSTRONG, Sid EASTOE and Chris PLANT. We look forward to seeing you all in your bright red 50 t-shirts soon.

And last but by no means least, a huge well done to Chloe DENSLOW for joining the 10 junior club.

Next week is an exciting week for milestones as we will be welcoming Ciaran Murphy into the 500 club, only the 21st person to join this illustrious club. Looking forward to joining the celebrations after the run...

Top Age Gradings

Congratulations to everyone below for getting above 80% in the age gradings and a special shout out to Mark for getting over 90% and scoring a new PB at Bushy in the process as well as his fastest ever parkrun after 332 attempts!

Mark SYMES 90.89 %
Matt ATKINS 87.57 %
Paul GAYLOR 87.36 %
Claire GRIMA 83.30 %
Jonathan CORNISH 82.25 %
Darren BRADLEY 81.55 %
Bev HARTIGAN 81.52 %
Mike DENNISON 80.64%
Mimi OWEN 80.22%

You can see the full list of results here

Octogenarians

On 7th July, we're lucky enough to be hosting the second annual get together of parkrun Octogenarians - that's runners over 80 for you and me. The two organisers behind the day, George and Richard paid us a visit today to check we were all okay to host the day and Carol and Ann took the opportunity to check that they were fighting fit and ready to run their 5km.

Please do spread the word if you know anyone who's over 80 and fancies a run/walk or jog around our beautiful park that they will be in good company on the 7th July if they come that day.

A Bit More Fancy Dress to Finish Off

As I said right at the top, we had some amazing people who really got into the spirit of things. No idea if this was planned in advance but loving the traditional nursing outfits below - with either icecream or prosecco as your 'post run' refreshment of choice!

I absolutely LOVE this photo of Julie and our Elisabeth at 'Elisabeth's Corner' - lovely to see our most famous volunteer getting in the spirit of things on Saturday

Carol decided to give Jonny a quick check up before allowing him to volunteer this week. As you can see Wendy went to great lengths to join in with the fancy dress by wearing her protective boot!

And one final picture of our wonderful team of volunteers, runners and various other fancy dressed up participants. A huge thank you to Duncan for all the brilliant photos.

So that's it for this week. This Saturday for your entertainment we have pacers, as it's an even month we'll be offering even minute pacing from 20 up until about 34 minutes.

See you all Saturday

Rob

Run Report Event No 737 – 2 June 2018

Posted on June 4, 2018 by bushyoffice

When you sign up to write the run report, there’s always a little nagging thought in the back of your mind – what are you going to write about this week? You always hope there’s going to be something big going on and I often scour the arriving crowds for signs of balloons or people setting up tables with cakes and champagne flutes as a sign that someone is celebrating a big milestone. Next week would be fine as it’s the big NHS 70 celebration so hopefully there will be 1200 people all dressed in amazing fancy dress – more of which later – but this week I was wondering what I’d be able to write about… and then I saw that Bruce Li's name was down on the list of volunteers as Photograper and I knew my troubles were over. No one is going to be reading what I’m prattling on about when they have Bruce’s amazing photos to look at.

We started Saturday off on a sad note as Ray informed everyone at the start of the sad news of the passing of Phil True who had run at Bushy on over 200 occasions since 2008. Apparently Phil adored Bushy park and especially loved his parkruns here. A number of his family were running on Saturday wearing Prostate Cancer t-shirts to honour his memory, they posted this picture on Facebook after the run.

Before the start we were honoured to have Sky Sports TV’s Stuart Amory doing the First Timer’s Briefing. Eagle eyed viewers of Sky Sports may have spotted him running alongside a rather nervous looking Jessica Ennis in the Vitality idents that feature before some programmes on Sky Sports. Stuart is rather publicity shy normally so I decided not to include his face in this picture – I’m sure he will appreciate this. Thanks for all your support Stuart, whether it’s briefing, marshalling or running…

I know we’ve said it before and I’m sure we’ll say it again, but we have amazing volunteers at Bushy and we really couldn’t put the event on each week without you. So while reading this, please do give a huge round of applause (quietly if you’re reading at work or in a library) to the following hi-viz heroes.

Andrew KENWARD • Anna SAVILL • Ben THERON • Benjamin ABLETT • Bethan STURDY • Bruce LI • Carmen PALMER • Carolyn FOSTER • Chris BRIMACOMBE • Christopher JOHNSON • Courtney LE FRANC • Daniel SHACKLETON • Darrell NEWMAN • Diane MULLEN • Donald BELL • Emilie HOWES • Ethan MULLEN • Glady GARTLAND • Harry VAUGHAN • Jacky SINCLAIR • James MORRIS • Jon TIBBETTS • Jonathan DICKINSON • Jonathan JONES • Joseph LANSDOWN • Josh MARS • Joy BELL • Julie SMITH • Katherine CURTIS TYLER • Kit POWNEY • Laura Helen MOSLEY • Lucy KATESMARK • Mack DOWNEY • Malcolm J TAYLOR • Margaret LE FRANC • Martin MILTON • Phil BLUER • Rachel GIBSON • Ray COWARD • Ray FRANKS • Richard VAN DER LEEDEN • Robert MOREY • Rodney Howard MCCULLOCH • Rupert POSTLETHWAITE • Samuel JONES • Sheila FERGUSSON • Stella HAMMOND • Stuart AMORY • Sue GRAHAM-KAHN • Tracey LENTHALL • Verity RIDING

Here's just a little selection of some of Bruce's amazing photos of our volunteers around and about on the course today:

An extra special mention should go to the brilliant Jonathan Dickinson who has not only volunteered on numerous occasions at Bushy and Bushy juniors but on Saturday decided to give a large number of people a healthy ‘nudge’ down in the results - by managing to forget to give out a chunk of 50 tokens. However this did mean that our wonderful Run Director Ray was able to step in and promote those same people 50 positions back up the results by the time they were published. So if you were wondering why you thought you finished in the 1300s but your email says 1200 and something, that’s why. Jonny is officially the nicest man in the world though so I know nobody would hold it against him for even a second…

Travelling all the way from Durham on the occasion of his 250th run was Graham Middleton, who amazingly also visited Bushy when he completed his 100th run back in February 2014. Graham’s visit to Bushy was actually delayed by eight weeks due to an injury and then volunteering until he could fit the trip in down here. Hope you had a great visit Graham and we look forward to seeing you sometime in 2023 for your 500th celebration!

The eagle eyed amongst you may have thought it was a fancy dress week this week if you’d seen Andy & Iggy before the start, although what you might have thought the theme was I have no idea. These guys are training for a run/swim event in the Lake District next weekend and so BEFORE parkrun this morning had – met at the Pheasantry at 5am, run to the lake in Shepperton, swum a ridiculous number of times aroud the lake and then run back to Bushy Park to finish it off with a 5km. Kind of puts my pathetic warm up routine in perspective a little bit…

This week 1313 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 115 were first timers and 151 recorded new Personal Bests. Passing various landmarks were:

No one reached the 500 milestone mark this week but we’re only two weeks away from the next member of the coveted 500 club. When discussing after Saturday’s run which day he would be reaching his 500, Ciaran Murphy was heard to say it was a Saturday…

The aforementioned Graham was the only person to reach 250 runs.

Amazingly nobody joined the 100 club but nine of you did join the 50 club, so big congratulations to:
Vanessa BURRELL, Nick CULLEN, Matthew THOMAS, Andy STRONG, Nicole SKIPPINS, Lois JERREY, Edward WRIGHT, David STEPHENS, Andrew RONKSLEY

And last but by no means least, joining the 10 club for juniors was Nicolas CRIFASI, Jared COUGHLIN and Barnaby COX

Five people topped the coveted 80% age grading this week, so many congratulations to:

Robert MCHARG 84.79 %
Pamela WHITTER 84.74 %
Merran SELL 81.78 %
Mara YAMAUCHI 81.24 %
Maddy WHITMAN 80.39 %
The full list of results can be seen on our website.

As I mentioned right at the start, we were really lucky enough to have Bruce visiting us on Saturday morning, he really does take some amazing pictures - even if he does always ask you to jump in the air for him! I've picked a bunch of my favourites below, but you can see all of them on his Flickr link here

The Before

The Start

The run itself

Elisabeth!

The After Party

Next Week

Don't forget next week we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the NHS. parkruns up and down the country will be donning fancy dress and saying thank you to all the hard working people of the NHS. We're also trying to raise awareness of parkrun amongst the NHS and hopefully we'll be having teams of people from local Trusts, hospitals and Clinical Commissioning Groups taking part next week. We would love it if you wanted to dress up or if that's not your kind of thing, please think about wearing blue - nice and easy for our runners with 500 runs under their belts!

So that’s it for another week, I hope everyone had a wonderful Saturday morning. Look forward to seeing you all next Saturday in your finest NHS fancy dress or blue t-shirts and let me leave you with this image of Run Director Ray and wife Ann, over 800 volunteering stints between them. Amazing!

Run Report Event No 734 – 12 May 2018

Posted on May 15, 2018 by bushyoffice

Fast and Numerous

After last week’s foray onto the old course to avoid the prospect of a starting line up gathering among the Chestnut Sunday marquees, we were back to the Butterfly course which we have now been using for just over 3 years. Whilst last weekend’s glorious sunshine was absent this week, what we did get were ideal running conditions which were probably a large contributory factor to bumper haul of PB’s and a new Butterfly course record! 51 cheerful and efficient volunteers helped organise the 1390 participants (in the top 10 of our most populous events list!) and visitors from far and wide including some Moonwalkers from Newport.
Run Director Ray Coward addresses the 1390 participants at the start line

Many thanks to all of the 51 volunteers ensuring another smooth successful event; they were:-

Amy ROBERTSON, Annie MCINTOSH, Benjamin ABLETT, Bethan STURDY, Carol DICKINSON, Carol SWAFFER, Catelin LE FRANC, Catherine STENSON, Chris BRIMACOMBE, Christine FRY, Courtney LE FRANC, Darrell NEWMAN, David BREWIN, David PAPWORTH, Dean FURBER, Diane MULLEN, Emilie HOWES, Emily May STAIN, Ethan MULLEN, Ethan SCOTT, Evie HINDE, Freya MORRISON, Glady GARTLAND, Harry VAUGHAN, Jack KENNEDY, Jacob ATKINSON, James SELL, Janice FRANKS, Jennifer MELBOURNE, Jessica TUCKMAN, Julie SMITH, Lucy KATESMARK, Maisy VINCENT, Martin MILTON, Michael TROTT, Mike DENNISON, Mike LAPWORTH, Phil BLUER, Polly ADAMS, Ray COWARD, Ray FRANKS, Richard VAN DER LEEDEN, Rob MACALISTER, Robert MOREY, Simon R, Steve MILLER, Susan HOWARTH, Timothy JACOB, Trevor MITCHELL, Wendy STOKES, Zoe Alison FAIZ

A quick reminder that our Parkrun events are totally dependent on securing a team of volunteers; there’s a wide range of roles to choose from, it’s great fun and you get to meet lots of great people and the gratitude from the participants makes it an incredibly uplifting experience. So, to the uninitiated, I would strongly urge you to Send Pat an email at bushyhelpers@parkrun.com if you fancy having a turn. You could….

Hand Tokens Out...

Right hand out, ready to receive your tokens!

Scan Finish Tokens and Barcodes...

It takes more than a broken foot to prevent Wendy Stokes from carrying out her scanning duties!

Sort The Tokens...

1390 finish tokens in the process of getting an initial sort. None went missing this week, so well done participants, well done volunteers!

Time the runners...

Timer Jack Kennedy clicks John Hanscombe’s 575th parkrun finish.

Or Simply Pose for Pictures with Other Famous Celebrities (Oh, and direct the event!)

Personal Bests

Firm ground and a pleasant breeze allowed runners to cool down without slowing down, and this led to an admirable 206 PB’s this week, of which 3 were captured by members of the 250 club, Mike Dennison, Zoe Faiz and David Gannon (who took 25 seconds off a PB that was only 3 weeks old).

Zoe and Mike, who have clocked up 317 and 313 parkruns respectively celebrate their impressive PB’s
12 of the PB’s obtained on Saturday were obtained by members of the 100 club, so many congratulations to:-
Kirsty KOTHAKOTA, David POPE, Helen NANCE, Kathryn DONKERSLEY, James STEP, Robert BRICOUT, Brian CAMERON, Judith CAMERON, Naomi BERRY, Jenna WHISTLER, Matthew NEWBERRY and Jennifer KOONTZ

First Finishers

Men
A blistering time of 14:52 saw Bradley Goater set a new “Butterfly Course” record today, as well as putting him at no 14 in the fastest Bushy Parkrun Men’s list, comfortably ahead of Sir Mo! (Sorry, no photo, Bradley had already warmed down, stretched out, grabbed a coffee from the cafe and left the park before I crossed the line and grabbed my camera).

1. Bradley Goater 14:52 – New PB
2. Andrius Jaksevicius 15:40
3. Colin High 15:56 – New PB

Women
We had a clean sweep of ladies registering PB’s on our podium today

1. Isabel Brinsden 17:30 – New PB!
2. Hanah Knapton 18:55 – New PB!
3. Gemma Carter 19:16 – New PB!

Young men

1. Kiran Lathia Hamblin – 18:58
2. Matthew Tyas – 19:13
3. Ross Hyde - 19:45

Young women

1. Isabel Livesey 19:29
2. Olivia Gross – 20:44
3. Charlotte Dawson – 21:42

Milestones

There were no new members of the 500 or 250 clubs this week

10 (Junior milestone)
Will CHETWYND-STAPYLTON
Tabitha JEFFERIES

50
Andrew BITHRAY
Ian DUTNALL
Spencer MITCHELL
Peter MIDDLEWICK
Ava SHACKLADY
Stephen JARMAN
Elspeth SAVILLE
Jane HARRIS

100
Glynis APPLEBY
Jennifer KOONTZ
Mark A INGHAM
Helen Cathryn TAYLOR
Andrew BARTON

Glynis Appleby made the trip from Newport with 5 of her friends to not only celebrate her 100th parkrun at the cradle, but also take part in the Moonwalk Marathon that was starting from Clapham Common at midnight that evening.

Left to right, Tracy, Louise, Glynis, (celebrating her 100th), Vicki, Dee and Tracy.
Dee later reported that the moonwalk was a strenuous challenge overcoming the extra time on your feet walking a marathon as opposed to running one, but the volunteer teams and the large amount of money raised for Breast Cancer charities made it all worthwhile. By the way, if anyone’s interested in next year’s event, did you know that men are also permitted to enter? (They do need to wear bra’s, but given the good cause, I’m sure that won’t be an issue; apparently they are useful for storing water bottles and gels!)

WAVA Age Grading
There were a tenacious ten runners achieving a WAVA age grade above the magical 80% today. Five of these runners also achieved PB’s; Well done to:-

Parkrunner Time Age Cat Grade
Olivia Gross 20:44 JW10 98.47%
Bradley Goater 14:52 SM20-24 86.77%
Gary Neville 18:37 VM55-59 85.41%
Andrius Jaksevicius 15:40 VM35-39 85.21%
Isabel rinsden 17:32 SW25-29 84.41%
Merran Sell 28:23 VW70-74 82.50%
Mike Dennison 19:35 VM60-64 81.87%
Colin High 15:56 SM30-34 81.59%
David Williamson 18:13 VM50-54 80.97%
Jamie Mcloughlin 17:22 VM40-44 80.42%

See you all next Saturday when it’s rumored that Harry and Meghan will not be taking part in a pre-wedding lap around our Royal Park (although we did have 2 Harry's running and 1 volunteering this week!)

Chris Brimacombe
Don't forget you can now follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/bushyparkrun
and for Bushy parkrun on facebook
www.facebook.com/bushyparkrun

and for parkrun UK on facebook at

http://www.facebook.com/parkrunuk

Interested in volunteering at Bushy parkrun? Please e-mail bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

Want to give feedback? Have anything to say or want anyone mentioned in future run reports? Please e-mail bushyoffice@parkrun.com Continue reading →

Run Report Event No 726 – 17 March 2018

Posted on March 23, 2018 by bushyoffice

Easter eggs on the shelves and snow in March!!!!

After a week where people were wearing sunglasses, the winter boots were left at home and put back into storage and spring felt like it had finally arrived, the mini beast from the east certainly taught us that mother nature knows best.

Winter felt that it was back again with strong cold winds and constant snow showers.

But the old Oak has been there and seen it all and remains unchallenged.

The Volunteers

So its no surprise that I salute each and every volunteer that gave up their time to stand out in the cold weather.

This weeks heroes were:

Andrew KENWARD • Ann COWARD • Anna MACLEAN • Anna SAVILL • Anne EDMONDS • Bethan STURDY • Carol DICKINSON • Carol SWAFFER • Carolyn FOSTER • Charles HARMER • Christine M MUSGROVE • Courtney LE FRANC • Daniel SHACKLETON • David BREWIN • Denys LYONS • Emilie HOWES • Ethan SCOTT • Evie HINDE • Freya MORRISON • Glady GARTLAND • Harry VAUGHAN • Hayden MATTHEWS • Jessica TUCKMAN • Jonathan DICKINSON • Julie PAPWORTH • Katrin KROSCHINSKI • Kit POWNEY • Louise RUSSELL • Lucy KATESMARK • Malcolm J TAYLOR • Margaret LE FRANC • Maria LADWA • Marisa BILLETT • Mike DENNISON • Mila BOKONJIC • Nicole RIEHL • Patrick TROUGHTON • Phil BLUER • Ray COWARD • Ray FRANKS • Richie O'DOWD • Robert MOREY • Sam CHAU • Sheila FERGUSSON • Shirley BUCKLEY • Steve COCHRANE • Steve MILLER • Susan HOWARTH • Suzanne GREEN • Trevor MORRIS • Wendy STOKES

If you have never volunteered before why not try and experience the other side of Parkrun and its different roles. You can get in touch via the Website or by sending an email to - bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

This week we had the additional benefit from having our Pacers out who all did a great job in pretty difficult conditions.

Celebrations

250 Club – Tessa Lovell and Jason Nourse

100 Club – Jeremy Hepworth, Dave Alvarez, Fi Webster, Peter Doyle, Eleanor Attridge.

50 Club – Bryan Searle, Nate Brazier, Nathan Blyth, Richard Hayler, Steph Harvey, David Thurston, Louis Croix, Ian Goodwin, Delyth Dilke, Lucy Smith, Chris Edmonds.

Junior 10 Club – Iris Brown, Hana Lindley, Izzy Day,

The Participants and other Stats / Info

911 Finishers, 88 First timers or 1^st time to Bushy parkrun. 48 PBs!!!! – Seems the pacers did a pretty good job!!!!

1^st Man across the line was Matt Atkins with an impressive 16.27 in those conditions and an grading of 84.90%

1^st Woman was Isabel Livesey 20.03 age grading of 77.31%

We had 6 clubs in the Top 10 - Kingston AC and Polytechnic Harriers, Belgrave Harriers, Team Surrey Triathlon Club, St Marys University College AC, SHAEF Shifters, Spenborough & District AC and Cambridge University Hare and Hounds.

The importance of warming up

I hope it did not go unnoticed but before the start a local running club from Walton were taking their warm up rather seriously which is a really good this to see as it one of the many ways to avoid injuries and get your body ready to participate. So an extra well done this week goes to the members of Riverside Rebels.

You could also have a go at being the lead bike. It's a very important position and as such has to be taken seriously - see below a warm up taking place

Wearing suitable clothing is another way to stay warm in these wintery conditions - no matter what the colour.

Finally predicted weather conditions are predicted to be a beautiful 11 degrees this week Have a great week all.

Ravi Lobo

Run Report Event No 724 – 3 March 2018

Posted on March 6, 2018 by bushyoffice

There’s snow business like Bushy business!

What a week it has been as we gladly bid farewell to February and were all set to embrace and welcome the Spring month of March but our hopes were dashed at this prospect as ‘The Beast from the East’ collided with ‘Storm Emma’ and caused chaos and the worst weather in the UK for years. Yet there was joy for tens of thousands of children who had unexpected days off school and took to the slopes on sledges after being inspired by Team GB’s Billy Morgan who returned from Pyeongchang with a bronze medal. Due to the Winter Olympics, the annual Oscar Awards ceremony which is traditionally held on the final Sunday in February, was pushed back a week and held this first weekend in March. Well there wasn’t a single ‘Oscar’ amongst our field at Bushy this parkrunday but all the brave and courageous souls who took part, whether running slow, snow, quick, quick, slow, or volunteering, are surely all worthy of an award for just turning up and taking part.

‘If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done’.

The snow must go on!

The kit starts to arrive!

‘There were 97 parkruns, 409 cancellations, and the total UK 5K parkrun population was 14624’. (Thank you to Elliot Line for this stat attack!)

An icy and quiet Heron Pond

After an exciting week for me at work which included taking part in the traditional annual World Book Day celebrations dressed as a toucan (and no snow days at school), it finished with a real cliffhanger as parkrunday approached. Behind the scenes, there were endless emails as to whether the event at Bushy would go ahead as safety is the main focus of everyone involved. With several checks of the park and the course, it was then decided by Event Director Rob Phillips to let the weekly event go ahead as planned but with a difference as it reverted for just this week to the old course. (The only other time when the old course is officially run is the annual weekend of Chestnut Sunday in May). The last time that I can recall that the course had a thick covering of snow was on 19 January 2013 when I was one of the 502 participants who took part and it was run as to what we now know as the old course but at that time was the regular weekly course!

A field of colour head over to brighten up Chestnut Avenue

Emma versus The Beast

With the recent weather conditions, it seemed apt to give a shout out to any of our hardy runners as named above. There certainly were plenty of beasts among the field but too many to mention so I opted for an alternative connection. Toby Bullock was a First Timer to parkrun and stampeded his way round in 24.59, Paul Wolff foxed his way around in 28.08 on his 92^nd parkrun and (maybe a relation) Daniel Wolff sneaked his way round in 19.02 on his 122^nd run. Jeremy Hawke flew round in 33.36 on his impressive 371^st 5k whereas Foxes (whom I am presuming are related!) Justine and youngster Jake cunningly conquered the course in 33.40. There were plenty of Emmas represented among the relatively low field today and they weren’t afraid to take on the beast, so well done for making it round Emma Braysher in 33.24 on her 7^th parkrun, Emma Dickinson took it easy and tail walked her way round today ahead of ‘The Big Half’ on Sunday, teenager Emma Hurdle soared her way round to finish in 24.56, Emma Littler completed her 52^nd parkrun in 30.03, Emma Moreton finished in 23.56 and was just 19 seconds adrift of her PB on her 185^th parkrun, Emma Norman has one more 5k to go until her 50^th milestone, young Emma Smith completed her 36^th in 31.20 and last but not least is Emma Wingate on her impressive 272^nd parkrun which means that the Emmas definitely defeated the beasts!

So how did you all do at this week’s event?

The event was in the cautious but cool hands of Run Director Simon Lane who did a rock-solid job as he safely sent you all off down the alternative old course down Chestnut Avenue. Myself and Zoe Faiz checked in the immense number of volunteers and Jan Franks and Lucy Katesmark nimbly handed out those all-important finish tokens. There were many marvelous marshals around the snow-covered course, many of the young Dof E’s had snow idea that there was an old course and had to be briefed and pointed in the right direction. The funnel was managed by a top team of experienced volunteers and it was somewhat strange seeing the different set up which was of course enhanced by the blanket of the white stuff.

There was a slight change in timekeepers as Jack Kennedy stepped in to be Andy Howarth’s back-up but between them, your fate was in their safe hands despite frozen fingers and numb thumbs!

The results bit:

And the Oscar goes to…

Top trio of beasts were: The infamous unknown runner yet again crossed the finish line first so the official credit goes to Frederick Slemeck in a slick 16.30. Jumping to the line in second was Ollie Hurdle in 17.53 closely followed by Tom Lovegrove just 4 seconds adrift.

Top trio of belles were: Teenager Isabel Livesey led the ladies home in 20:15 with Georgina Furze 21 seconds afterwards. Victoria Haslam completed the trio of the females in 20.56.

Top Juniors were: James Milton in 19.41 followed by Alexander Weatherstone in 20.57 with Cameron Fraser crossing the line 18 seconds later.

The aforementioned Isabel Livesey with Emily Coulson following in her footsteps in 20.56 and young Helena White in 21.51. They were all taking it easy and carefully today!

The Stats Bit

How many?

There was a huge dip in tokens handed out this week as just 739 participants braved the wintry conditions and were dashing through the snow. The last time that the tokens finished in three digits was on the 1^st January this year with 940 finishers yet in the seven hundred was on 1^st January 2017 with just 20 more runners. Whereas this was the lowest attendance since 1^st January 2016 when 717 made it to the park after celebrating the night before. The pattern here is obviously with New Year’s Eve celebrations yet this week the icy and treacherous conditions obviously deterred many and the warmth of the duvet must have been more inviting!

Who were they?

242 of the identified field were female, 466 were male whereas 31 declined to declare their result.

A sparse but resilient 42 runners were First Timers at Bushy Park – 11 of these were totally new to parkrun. Welcome and well done for starting your parkrun journey in such challenging conditions. It will get easier from here and you are guaranteed a PB next time!
Just one runner had an age grading over 80%! Well done to Simon Bean with 82.38%

How fast?

Just 39 registered runners slid in under 20 minutes.
A nifty 9 braved the ice and smashed it with New PB’s! Special mention must go to the following few for such mean feats in tricky circumstances:
Lee Jenkins on his 65^th 5k in 24.07. This was however just his 2^nd run at Bushy as he usually runs at Bracknell (PB 23.56) but today, despite the slippery conditions, he took 52 seconds off his previous time set here last September. Likewise, to teenager Alex Gurteen (who usually runs at Nonsuch) on his 115^th parkrun and similarly his 2^nd at Bushy taking 15 seconds off his time from December last year to give him a crisp new PB here of 18.41. Regular Kingston parkrunner Mark Cannings marked his 50^th 5k with a New PB of 20.14 at Bushy and youngster Sam Robertson from Woking parkrun achieved a New PB here too of 22.15 which wipes 57 seconds off his time from February on his 15^th parkrun.

Special Plaudits

As we should be aware, it’s not all about running yet it is somewhat astounding as to the amount of people who run every week yet never volunteer! This event couldn’t happen without the wonderful welcoming and warm-hearted volunteers every week. So, a moment of gratitude please to the following:

Alex TICKELL • Andrew HOWARTH • Angela MACSON • Bethan STURDY • Carol DICKINSON • Carol SWAFFER • Carolyn FOSTER • Courtney LE FRANC • Daniel SHACKLETON • Diane MULLEN • Edie PROUD • Emilie HOWES • Ethan SCOTT • Evie HINDE • Glady GARTLAND • Hannah PICKUP • Harry VAUGHAN • Jack KENNEDY • Janice FRANKS • Jessica TUCKMAN • Jonathan DICKINSON • Josh MARS • Julie PAPWORTH • Lorraine DILLAMORE • Lucy KATESMARK • Lucy THATCHER • Mack DOWNEY • Margaret LE FRANC • Melanie HOWES • Niamh ALLERTON • Nick BLANCHARD • Nick ROWE • Phil BLUER • Philip GODDEN • Ray FRANKS • Richard MOORE • Rob PHILLIPS • Robert MOREY • Rupert POSTLETHWAITE • Sally ROWE • Sam CHAU • Shirley BUCKLEY • Simon GREENHILL • Simon LANE • Stefan KRUEGER • Susan HOWARTH • Suzanne GREEN • Verity RIDING • Wendy HAPPS • Will RAWLING • Zoe Alison FAIZ Please send Pat an email at bushyhelpers@parkrun.com if you fancy having a turn, you won’t be disappointed as satisfaction is guaranteed!

The Tail Walkers escort Octogenarian Madge round safely on her 398th parkrun

Milestone markers

Unlike last week with the bumper celebrations, like the decreasing temperatures, they were zero this week! I celebrated my 250^th parkrun on this weekend last year in the Spring like conditions amongst the daffodils and deer, what a difference a year makes! David Tyas has just 4 more to go to become the next member of the prestigious 500 club whereas Tim Syrad and Hardev Bal both have one more 5k to go until their tremendous 250^th’s. Fi Webster, Kathryn Lovegrove and Rob O’Connor are all on 99 runs and ready to trade in their red tops for black. Now in the red are Claude Harry, Clive Sait and Mark Cannings who all completed their half a century 5K’s.

parkrun tourists
University of Portsmouth pilgrimage

Despite the icy weather, we warmly welcomed visitors from elsewhere which included a large assemblage from Portsmouth University. They could hardly go unnoticed as the majority of them were wearing unusual running attire, which had nothing to do with the freezing temperatures! There was an array of fancy dress costumes which was just for fun but Bushy Park wasn’t their planned destination to run. The students were staying in a London hostel to attend ‘The Hyde Park Relays’ (which is the UK’s largest annual student relay race and is now in its 70^th year, open to university students, their alumni, and guests from the UK and beyond, the race sees over 600 competitors take to the paths of Hyde Park in Central London with a route passing iconic sights including the Serpentine lake, Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner) but with the ice and snow it was cancelled due to unsafe conditions. So many of them decided to do a 5k run anyway (however some stayed under the duvet) and what better place to do it than the birthplace of parkrun?! The determined set of students battled their way to Bushy by trains and bus to join up with fellow colleague Harry Dillamore, who was staying in the comfort of his family home local to Bushy Park where his lovely mum Lorraine is an avid and valuable volunteer. This week she had a multiple of roles, but her official volunteer duty was First Timers Briefing, which she has performed many times before but this week she had to change her speech accordingly and quickly to accommodate the old course. Fortunately, her audience was somewhat rather small this week! Then she was left in charge of the students' bags and coats that were deposited at the start and being a kind and caring person with natural maternal instincts, she carried all their belongings to the big oak tree at the finish. Thankfully with some help! After that I spotted her on banner duty as she held the University banner advertising their running club, whilst cheering the students over the finish line. I wonder if she lovingly cooked them all a superhero breakfast too?!

Their presence certainly brightened up the course and it’s not every week when you see Superman warming up in Bushy Park! Needless to say, even though their official running event was cancelled, I was assured that the after party was still on schedule and I foresee there will be a few sore heads the next morning too!

One of the all-time greats from ‘The Great North Run’

There were a few noticeable apricot tops on display too amongst the field, one was from Durham parkrun and was worn by John Tomlinson. The sexagenarian from up north was visiting his son after a somewhat challenging journey in the midweek snowy conditions and during his stay he returned to Bushy Park for the 3^rd time yet it was his first on the old course and it was his 112^th 5k overall. Keen runner John has a great claim to fame as he is a member of the ‘Great North Run All Runs Club’ of which there are now under 100 associates remaining. The first Great North Run was staged on June 28, 1981, when 12,000 runners participated whereas nowadays more than 55,000 runners take part in the Newcastle-South Shields race each year, making it the biggest mass participation run in the UK and one of the biggest running events in the world. I was fortunate enough to get a place and ran this event in September 2013 alongside Mo Farah, (well we were both taking part in our first GNR!) and it was an amazing experience and a tick off my to do list. However, John and his fellow clan get to experience a few minutes of fame before they set off as they are entitled to line up on the start line behind the elite runners at this annual prestigious event. If there is any half marathon to do in the world, this iconic one is a must!

From windy Washington to Bushy blizzards

The other visible apricot top today was from Fletcher’s Cove and was proudly modeled by jovial Joyce Adams who was on vacation from Washington DC. Fortunately for her, Bushy parkrun wasn’t on the extensive cancelled event list as it’s a long way to travel for some parkrun tourism. Her annual trip to the UK thankfully included her first 5k at the cradle of parkrun and meeting up with Paul and Jo Sinton-Hewitt to take special delivery of some finish tokens for the ever-increasing events which Joyce is involved in back home in the USA. They now have 16 events in total and Joyce has run 55 times at various locations and she is an all-important member of the core volunteer team. Her handful in the UK included Moors Valley in Dorset last weekend and now she surely has to come back to the UK again to experience the real Bushy masses and the beautiful butterfly course of the park. However, she did get to sample a typical English pleasure in the Pheasantry as I spotted her carb loading on a scrumptious scone with jam and cream before ‘The Big Half’ on Sunday which I am sure would have powered her round!

What’s on next week?

Business should be back to normal next week as the snow and ice have since thawed and it looks like that Spring can resume in the park. It’s also British Pie Week, which takes place every year on the first full week of March and was started back in 2007 by Jus-Rol. Apparently as a fully-fledged nation of pie lovers and with so many great recipes available it just falls to you to decide what kind of a pie lover you are – whether it’s a savoury pie, a dessert pie, a crumble, a pasty or a pizza pie you can get a whole week of entertainment from attempting to make them, and even more fun trying them all! According to the most common internet search results for what we Brits are looking at recipes for, here’s our top 10, love them or loathe them:-

1: Cottage Pie 2: Fish Pie 3: Shepherd’s Pie 4: Chicken & Leek Pie 5: Chicken and Mushroom Pie 6: Steak and Ale Pie 7: Meat and Potato Pie 8: Pork Pie 9: Steak and Kidney Pie 10: Corned Beef Pie

Happy British Pie Week! Just a thought though… ‘who ate all the pies?’

That's all folks!

Remember there’s snow place like home so see you back at Bushy!

Julie Papworth

"There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people."
-Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike

Don't forget you can now follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/bushyparkrun
and for Bushy parkrun on facebook
www.facebook.com/bushyparkrun

and for parkrun UK on facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/parkrunuk
Interested in volunteering at Bushy parkrun? Please e-mail bushyhelpers@parkrun.com

Want to give feedback? Have anything to say or want anyone mentioned in future run reports? Please e-mail bushyoffice@parkrun.com

Older Posts in Category ⇒

⇐ Newer Posts in Category