No shortage of participants and volunteer's at parkrun on the 14th March. 95 participants came together in high spirits to encourage and support each other to complete the course.

We always receive such lovely feedback on how supportive our volunteers are, in all weathers they keep smiling, keep turning up week after week and keep cheering everyone on. We really do have a great team.

We had visitors from as far as Yorkshire and 11 first timers.

A total of 31 PBs achieved, a big well done.

Dennis and Brian, our over 80s did amazing as always and really put me to shame, as my achievement every week is getting out of bed. We also had a couple of our four legged friends taking part, a big well done to them.

As I was unable to print out the volunteer list another member of the core team, who I wont name, kindly offered to print it out for me. She did print it out but picked up the wrong sheet on her way out of the house. I now know how to make pitta bread.

Wendy
Run Director

parkrun research shows that, across the world, women are less likely than men to take part in parkrun. Despite the fact that females make 54% of registrations, they are less likely than men to take part in parkrun and to continue participating!

#23 was all about encouraging them to get involved; walking, jogging, running or volunteering - which definitely seemed to give a boost to our numbers!

140 people took part, with over 50% being female! Our pre-run brief also saw an influx of new runners to The Leas - including tourists all the way from Medway! Thanks for joining us Medway Fit! Many of our first timers also took a This Girl Can top (provided by Kent Sport) to run in!

We also had lots of selfies in the #IWDparkrun #thisgirlcan selfie frame! Pictures can be found on our facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/TheLeasparkrunMinster/

#23 was a lot of fun - we hope to see all our new faces in the following weeks.

Gabs
Run Director

The Leas Park Run Number 22 was the wettest one to date. Despite the rain we had a good turn out of 18!volunteers and 69 runners. Duncan Anderson was celebrating a Milestone of a total of 100! parks runs he was dressed as a centurion and also shared cake with everyone to celebrate his achievement. We thoroughly enjoyed celebrating with you and cake was amazing.

 thank you to everyone that attended

It was another crisp morning  - at 8am Alexa told me it was 4 degrees and raining, so she was half right: It was beautiful, serene and completely calm when I turned up.

Today, 150 people took part, including 45 first timers and visitors from 15 different clubs including some from Worchestershire, Foots Cray, Medway and Sittingbourne. Congrats to George Collins for achieving his 50th different parkrun today with us....

However today's report focuses and highlights our marvelous team of jolly volunteers, no names to save embarrassment!

We have those dependables who relentlessly turn up smiling every week, those you can rely on to turn up whenever they can and those one off volunteers that are always welcomed for bringing their own little ray of sunshine into the team. There are those who crack the jokes and make us laugh and one who doesn't get the jokes and makes us laugh even more

There are those who oversleep who come rushing in with apologies, those whose bus broke down but they didn't give up and still made it and those who are happy to walk to the very end of the course and stand there on their own marshaling every week.

However, it would be remiss of me not to ask what went wrong with us all this morning.... Every week after the start we have a little sweep stake for fun, guessing how many participants were at the start line. And it's always a close call with one guessing quite close to the  finish number. But were we all asleep this morning or just not paying attention: We had guesses that were up to 75 away from the finish number and our best was still 57 away! We should be ashamed of ourselves, :)  LOL

Joking aside, let me finish by playing the sympathy card  :(  Finally there is me, who quite frankly feels like doggy do do...(had a cold for 4 weeks, can't shake it, can't breathe through my nose and can't use the word I want to use here to describe how I feel). The volunteers make this event fun for me and made me feel 100 times better this morning, even it only lasted that short while.....

We've had 89 different volunteers help us on the 18 events so far and more are always welcome. We all know this event can't happen without your support so thank you all very much.

Next week is my week off but hope to see everybody again the following week.

Tony

The Leas Park Run number 17 started off quiet but the numbers grew as we got closer to 9am and we had an amazing turnout. 187 participant's all warming up ready to set off on the picturesque route along the sea front.

We had visitors from Nottingham, Tonbridge, Horesham, Brighton and London. Hope you all enjoyed The Leas Parkrun.

There were a total of 54 participants trying the Leas parkrun for the first time, and 9 of these participant's were trying a parkrun for the first time.

52 participant's celebrated a PB WELL DONE!!

It was a clear, crisp morning meaning it was cold but conditions were not to bad for the runners.

First Lady home was Lucy Reid who was not only First Lady today she also broke the ladies course record and has also taken the overall course record. Well done Lucy on your great achievement. Lucy is in training for the Granola half marathon in Spain that she is running representing England in a couple of weeks. She was also the quickest female across the whole parkrun network! The first male back today was Lucy’s boyfriend Alex Reed-Brewer who was very proud of Lucy and her achievements.

Our lovely volunteers Harry Gill and   Debbie Hodgson took some amazing photos of our morning.

You can find photos here https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOYBWwxfMAjK0E_3RHOyUqm56mxV6pu8p1KijhsWhhVUFhJl75-1uIMwOc4AKwxnw?key=dVlXY1ZGUkZNWUNHdWhEQWlJVUhfdUtzUWRCdjRR

Thank you to everyone that attended. Looking forward to doing it all again next Saturday.

Adrienne

Well, New Year’s Resolutions certainly kicked in this week, as we saw 172 participants take part in this week’s event, which is our second largest turn out! We had so many participants, we had to break into our second shoestring of finish tokens and untying knots under pressure is a feat – just ask Marie!

Fortunately, Kris did a marvellous job in handing them out and none were dropped, though at the pub count up and sorting, we found 3 tokens were missing, so please remember to return tokens to the scanners or place in the tubs on the ground. Thank you

Tourists this week came from Orpington, Eastbourne, Great Lines and “not every far away” and a record number of first timers here too, with 68 participants joining us here at the Leas.  Event conditions were obviously favourable, as 43 people achieved personal bests. Great work and well done!

Big thanks as always to our all our volunteers and today I took a few snaps of them, including Wendy (who doesn’t run) pictured here crossing the line whilst timekeeping:

and Kris (who does run) being another ‘hi-vis hero’ in giving out the finish tokens – not yet under token pressure!

If you would like to volunteer, please drop us a line at our email address theleas@parkrun.com or give us a shout on Facebook.

See you next week!

Helen