I wasn’t able to do much for this one, but a huge thank you to Keswick Fire and Rescue Team for coming down to support parkrun, and promote the #thisgirlcan campaign, as part of International Women’s Day at parkrun. A friendly, smart and professional bunch who I think we can be proud to call part of our community. I’ve told them that they would be very welcome to join us at parkrun, and that you don’t need to be able to run like fellow firefighter Ricky Lightfoot to enjoy the experience! Thanks again, we appreciated the support.

Many thanks too, for your understanding regarding a slightly different approach to using the finish tokens. It’s important that we work together on this one, so I’ll be asking you to hold your hand out flat to receive the finish token as you come through the funnel. Please then present it this way to the scanners, in order that they can scan without taking your token, before please putting it in the bucket yourself. If you’re kind enough to be the person that gives out tokens, please try not to touch your face during the run, and wash your hands immediately after the run. I do not expect that careful use of our finish tokens will eradicate a pandemic...but it seems like the right thing to do!

Can I say a thank you to our volunteer team once again. For yet another Saturday, it was cold and damp, which is fine for running, but less so for volunteering. Mike and Maureen were down in the park very early this morning to put up the tent, which is so useful for leaving all our kit in during the run.

I can see work is progressing on our railway line, and will post any updates when we have them. I realise that the five laps of the park is nowhere near as popular as the railway, and of course, we’ll be moving back as soon as we can. In the meantime, please do what I’ve done, which is to help keep parkrun going until we can go “home”.

Well done to everyone who ran, and can I apologise for our absent water feature, which actually proved rather popular over the last couple of weeks. I’m sure that a developing relationship with the fire station means we can reinstate a few inches of cold water for your to run through five times!

We have a couple of volunteers on the roster for next week already, but if you would like to come and enjoy helping us to make it happen, please contact me at keswick@parkrun.com

This week 123 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 31 were first timers and 17 recorded new Personal Bests. Representatives of 29 different clubs took part.

The event was made possible by 10 volunteers:

Adam CAMPION • Peggy CAMPION • Anna CAMPION • Jane BOND • Mike HIRST • Roy WATKINS • Duncan BOOTH • Dave PIERCY • Kathy MORRIS • Katy HOPE

Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Keswick parkrun Results Page.

The male record is held by Sam STEVENS who recorded a time of 15:29 on 27th August 2016 (event number 117).
The female record is held by Hayley CARRUTHERS who recorded a time of 17:22 on 1st September 2018 (event number 221).
The Age Grade course record is held by Anna CRITCHLOW who recorded 90.60% (18:58) on 28th December 2019 (event number 291).

Keswick parkrun started on 5th April 2014. Since then 14,023 participants have completed 44,935 parkruns covering a total distance of 224,675 km, including 6,791 new Personal Bests. A total of 443 individuals have volunteered 3,268 times.

After two storms in two weeks, and having turned parkrun into a race in order to outrun Storm Dennis, I thought we were due an easy week. Not to be. It was too wild and windy to be able to put up the gazebo, and we were all out in the open. But, it did manage not to rain until almost everyone was home, so I guess that means it was good weather this week, really!

Given the marginal conditions, I was up and about early to check the course. A fairly catastrophic met office report came in at ten o'clock on the Friday evening, so I thought I was just going down to confirm the cancellation of the run. I was down at the park at 8:00am, and did a lap of the course on my bicycle. It was looking good, and I noticed the presence of a rather fine water feature around half way round the lap. It felt fine to ride a bike through. I guess it might have been alright to ride through once, but I guess I hadn't really thought what it might be like to run through it five times! However, like all these things, it didn't slow down the fastest runners much, and generated plenty of fun and laughter. There were one or two requests on social media for such a feature to become a regular every week. This was a joke, right?

Thank you for your patience with the slightly slower barcode scanning at the moment, as we get used to using the phone app. It is working well, but we're just having to get used to things, and a period of dry weather would have helped! If anyone wishes to volunteer, we do have phone covers to lend each week, and it is very straight forward. As I have mentioned before, it allows us to process the results independently of the official, and ageing parkrun laptop, which allows us to function with a larger team of run directors. It also makes results processing much quicker, and in fact, they were done this week in the cafe on an iPad, within a short time of the completion of the run. Any delay in the results appearing would be completely due to the fact that I completely forgot to confirm the volunteer roster. This task was eventually done from the comfort of a Keswick pub later in the evening! Sorry about that, and a big thank you tot his week's volunteer team.

This week 179 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 75 were first timers and 7 recorded new Personal Bests. Representatives of 41 different clubs took part.

The event was made possible by 9 volunteers:

Adam CAMPION • Peggy CAMPION • Anna CAMPION • Mike HIRST • Tom CHAPMAN • Duncan BOOTH • John E MERRITT • Dawn TITLEY • Katy HOPE

Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Keswick parkrun Results Page.

The male record is held by Sam STEVENS who recorded a time of 15:29 on 27th August 2016 (event number 117).
The female record is held by Hayley CARRUTHERS who recorded a time of 17:22 on 1st September 2018 (event number 221).
The Age Grade course record is held by Anna CRITCHLOW who recorded 90.60% (18:58) on 28th December 2019 (event number 291).

Keswick parkrun started on 5th April 2014. Since then 13,959 participants have completed 44,659 parkruns covering a total distance of 223,295 km, including 6,756 new Personal Bests. A total of 443 individuals have volunteered 3,247 times.

You’ll get wet feet, you’re really not allowed to go for a paddle in the river, and if there’s lots of rain during the run we may have to review things but right now, we are on. See you there !

You may well have read here that my Co-Event Director Lance Saxby recently passed away very suddenly and tragically. Lance’s family have a second home near Keswick, and shared their lives between home in Harrogate, and Keswick, with Keswick life centring around Keswick parkrun. It was a privilege to be able to organise a parkrun to celebrate Lance’s here, and to think about his contribution.

This week, however, it was time to head to Harrogate to visit Lance’s other home. As the director of Keswick parkrun, I don’t get to be a parkrun tourist very often, but I really enjoy it when I do. Harrogate parkrun takes place in a large park area near the town centre called The Stray. It’s wide, open, beautiful, and at this time of year, windy and very cold. I gathered for the first timers briefing, which was a strange mix of information for both those new to parkrun, and those specifically new to Harrogate parkrun. I was happy to get the run underway and to start warming up a bit. There was a group of around twenty of us from Keswick, and a further group who were there to support. The supporters gathered on what I like to call Keswick Corner, and it’s so encouraging to get a cheer, on each of the three laps.

The parkrun was soon over, and I enjoyed reflecting on how much I like seeing the same warm and supportive atmosphere recreated all over the country in our franchise without money! We headed back to a friend’s house for post run coffee - no Café West on The Stray yet, from where I was able to process Keswick parkrun’s results. I know there has been a little resistance to this, but we have moved over to the phone app for timing and scanning. There are a small number of volunteers who prefer to use the old scanners and stop watches, but there are a couple of significant advantages to the app. Firstly, on this occasion, it meant the files could be sent to me in Harrogate for processing. This meant that the run director, who was taking on the role for the first time, only had to worry about the run, and not the processing. Also, our ageing laptop was beginning to struggle with the stop watches, and one week, we would have had no results. So, thank you for your patience with this change. We have now purchased some waterproof phone cases if that helps!

We held a short service for Lance following the post parkrun coffee, and I was able to stand up and give a short speech about my times with Lance, and to say thank you for his contribution to Keswick parkrun.

Following a crazy drive back across the Pennines, I was unsurprised to see Keswick Junior parkrun having to cancel on Sunday morning! It was good to be back in Keswick, and I look forward to being at my home parkrun next week.

Lastly, in what I know is a rather mixed write up, please see below. I’ve been in touch to say it would be great to have a special session at parkrun, but these sessions would be useful for all of us. Details below.

__________________________________________________________
CPR & First Aid training courses

We’re determined to transform the UK into a Nation of Lifesavers: a country where everyone knows how to save a life.

A free, stand-alone, two-hour training event supported by the British Heart Foundation and run by Keswick & District Community First Responders.

You are welcome to come to one of three local sessions in February 2020.

Come and learn how to:
deal with an unconscious person
recognise a heart attack and a cardiac arrest
perform CPR
deal with choking
respond to serious bleeding.
It’s hands-on, free, and good fun!

Portinscale Village Hall: Tues. 18th February 7 – 9 pm
Embleton Village Hall: Weds. 26th February 7 – 9 pm
Keswick The Inn on the Square back bar function room:
Thurs. 27th February 3 – 5 pm

no need to book, just turn up…
__________________________________________________________

Obviously, I wasn’t in Keswick to write about the details of this week’s run, but here are the statistics:

A big thank you to all of the volunteer team, but a special mention to Paul Titley, stepping up to the role of run director for the first time, and of course to Dawn Titley, who i know will have given him lots of back up. Well done you two, and I hope you enjoyed the experience. Welcome to the team!

This week 124 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 29 were first timers and 30 recorded new Personal Bests. Representatives of 26 different clubs took part.

The event was made possible by 12 volunteers:

Sharon MCGAREL • Adam CAMPION • Anna CAMPION • Paul TITLEY • Rhiannon WEST • Roy WATKINS • Duncan BOOTH • John E MERRITT • Chris MORRISON • Geoff TOOGOOD • Dawn TITLEY • Harrison BURBUSH

Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Keswick parkrun Results Page.

The male record is held by Sam STEVENS who recorded a time of 15:29 on 27th August 2016 (event number 117).
The female record is held by Hayley CARRUTHERS who recorded a time of 17:22 on 1st September 2018 (event number 221).
The Age Grade course record is held by Anna CRITCHLOW who recorded 90.60% (18:58) on 28th December 2019 (event number 291).

Keswick parkrun started on 5th April 2014. Since then 13,832 participants have completed 44,309 parkruns covering a total distance of 221,545 km, including 6,723 new Personal Bests. A total of 443 individuals have volunteered 3,226 times.

For a while now, we have enjoyed visits from Tom Chapman. There are Tom Chapmans all over the place, and adding the correct Tom Chapman to the volunteer roster is a nightmare, unless you have the correct parkrun ID. This became something of a running joke between Tom, Lance and I, and this particular Tom Chapman became known as The Tom Chapman. Lance would have particularly enjoyed this run report. Best wishes to all Tom Chapmans out there, but special thanks to The Tom Chapman!

Well, this RED January lark is hard work, and I'm not even doing it! However I have been throwing some extra runs in this month in support of my partner Claire, and so I found myself standing on very tired legs on a grey January morning in Fitz Park. It was nice to see a few familiar faces from our home parkrun (Darlington) as we stood ready for the run briefing.

Run Director Mike did a great job of entertaining the troops, alerting us to the fact that there was a visiting camera/ film crew in attendance, so it was best smiles all round. Before you know it, with a quick ready, steady, go! - we were off.

The five lap course makes for a very challenging event, despite being very flat. On the old out and back course, you could tick off landmarks as you passed them, and as you only passed them once (in each direction), it was easy to track your progress. But doing the laps five times is a different creature and so I find myself doing a lot more mental arithmetic l as I run along. The joys of converting kilometres on the ground into miles in my head will keep me entertained for hours I can tell you! This morning I actually tried switching that inner voice off, and simply enjoyed the run. It's great to get the extra encouragement each time you pass the finish line, knowing that with each lap the end has just got a little closer.

I can be guilty of looking at my watch far too often to keep an eye on pace, but today I just wanted to "run by feel", so I ignored the watch and just enjoyed the atmosphere. Although my legs were tired, I managed to stay fairly consistent, keeping an eye on the people in front of me to make sure I was roughly keeping up with them.Of course you can't help but admire the scenery, looking at the fells to your right on the outward section of the lap and then the river on the home stretch.

I find that the first lap goes fairly quickly, with the second, third and fourth laps being the real hard work. The final lap is where you can tick down the metres as you head to the finish funnel and the smiling timekeepers and number checkers. I had a lovely run, as always it starts the weekend on a positive note.

I cannot be at Keswick next week, so here's my small tribute to Lance. As Keswick is not my local event, whenever I wanted to volunteer it usually involved a couple of messages between myself and Lance, normally asking for my parkrun ID. Eventually I just became "The Tom Chapman" to Lance to make his life easier! We ran together on a number of occasions including the Keswick half-marathon, but what sticks in my mind is a recent(ish) parkrun where we were neck and neck, but Lance really pushed and encouraged me and I got my Keswick pb of a fraction over 20 minutes. So Lance, I am going to be chasing that sub-20, and when I get there, it will be thanks to you.

Thanks again Tom, and before we finish with the official details below, as Tom has pointed out, it's a tribute to Lance Saxby next Saturday, so please...fetch everyone!

This week 133 people ran, jogged and walked the course, of whom 30 were first timers and 31 recorded new Personal Bests. Representatives of 20 different clubs took part.

The event was made possible by 10 volunteers:

Anna CAMPION • Mike HIRST • Rachel TICKNER • Jackie WINDRIDGE • Vanessa METCALFE • Kathryn CLARKE • Duncan BOOTH • John E MERRITT • Hannah SMITH • Dawn TITLEY

Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Keswick parkrun Results Page.

The male record is held by Sam STEVENS who recorded a time of 15:29 on 27th August 2016 (event number 117).
The female record is held by Hayley CARRUTHERS who recorded a time of 17:22 on 1st September 2018 (event number 221).
The Age Grade course record is held by Anna CRITCHLOW who recorded 90.60% (18:58) on 28th December 2019 (event number 291).

Keswick parkrun started on 5th April 2014. Since then 13,760 participants have completed 43,981 parkruns covering a total distance of 219,905 km, including 6,676 new Personal Bests. A total of 438 individuals have volunteered 3,202 times.