Brian did a fabulous job, this morning as run Director (but then he always does!), in honouring the first ever parkrun at Bushy and mentioning our founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt.Thank you to all those who brought cakes, they went down exceedingly well.

parkrun will never be this small again! There are an average of 16 new parkruns across the world every month bringing a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. As Brian mentioned, they don't just happen on their own.  There are an army of volunteers behind every event and although you turn up at 0850 parkrun volunteers are there just after 8am and still putting kit away half an hour after everybody has left for their coffee.  Anybody staying after to help lift the boxes, gather the stakes, fold jackets and put away kit in the lock-up are always welcome. More hands make light work.

I was with the tail walker this morning. Initially there were two tails in two different positions so, technically, the last one is the true tail walker.  However, the last trio stopped after the first lap, so James and I trotted a bit here and there to catch the final two walkers. It was great to chat and call out to the front and middle runners as they overtook us and to mention them by name if we knew them. Some called back.

James has been coming to parkrun since 2014 and although he is a regular and I thought I knew him well, we actually had an in depth chat about our lives and I learned a lot more. It's always good to chat. He also loves to cycle and does some amazing rides with our Kim starting at midnight achieving great distances. It's always nice to say, thank you, to the marshals out on the course and you can always find their names here.  We always love it if you know our names.

Photos of all our marshals and all others here. Thank you Lin.

We have two new permanent volunteers now, Brian Palmer who lives the first beach hut! and Peter Marsh. Thank you guys, much appreciated.

This week we did have a lot of extra marshals (we never turn anybody away), due to the Ashford 10k Sunday, so we had three Fraserettes whilst Fraser had an unexpected lie in this morning. Thank you Sue, Marilyn and Mark.

On the first Saturday in November Whitstable will be celebrating their 9th birthday. Definitely a cake day! It always rains!

Jacky

Whenever I’m RD I always seem to struggle to find the time to sit down, write and post a run report, before I know it Saturday is only a day or 2 away and I’ve started to forget what had happened the weekend before. Well like most Saturday morning’s at Tankerton a dedicated group of volunteers and runners turned up to put on Whitstable parkrun number 474.

As usual everything seems to just happen, as 9am got closer and new runners to Whitstable had been briefed it was then over to me where I went through my pre-run brief. I started off by welcoming our new runners and tourists, I then highlighted the Pilgrims Hospice Colour run on the 20^th October at Cliftonville and we then celebrated this week’s milestones. Congratulations to Liam Hanson, Mary Hedges, Tom Waschbusch, Steve Lund and Mark Sandom who all hit memorable parkrun milestones. We also got to wish Mary Hedges a Happy Birthday and visitor Liam Powell good luck as he was getting married in the afternoon. I then gave a shout out to our pacers and tail walker before we all made our way down to the start line.

It was quite windy and comments from most of you were that down on the prom running towards Herne Bay it was fine, but coming back towards the finish it was a battle against the wind. As you all started to cross the finish line one of our visitors from Belfast came over and had a chat with me about his local parkrun and how he had enjoyed his run with us along the coast. I then noticed a queue of runners snaked across the slopes, it turns out the finish tokens had been dropped and a parkrun conga line had started to form. Luckily everything was under control and between the marshals and runners it looks like everyone got their finish tokens.

Just as everything seems to just happen to put on Whitstable parkrun the same seems to just happen with the finish, suddenly everything is packed away ready for next time.

Speaking of time when I did this week’s results I had left a runner out who hadn’t got a token, not realising this would cause an issue I was glad when Michelle let me know that her New PB wasn’t quite right as she had crossed the finish line together with Gemma yet the results had them a couple of minutes apart, thank you for letting me know Michelle. Just so that you are all aware this only affected times after 36 minutes.

Thank you to Lin for taking a few pictures, if you want to take a look these can be found through the link on our website - https://www.parkrun.org.uk/whitstable/photos.

This week parkrun turned 15, Happy Birthday parkrun!! To help celebrate with the parkrun world this weekend anything goes, perhaps you could dress up? or not? Perhaps bring and share some cake? Or even better eat some cake? Run fast or run slow? But most importantly wherever you are running this weekend enjoy your run and reflect on all the things parkrun has helped you achieve either as a runner or volunteer.

See you Saturday

Justin