Today was a special event for me as it was my 100th parkrun at Wythenshawe and 200th parkrun overall. Sadly there is no t-shirt for that (unless you make you own) so instead I’ve been rewarded with the opportunity to write this run report. Enjoy your week off from this job Jonathan Butcher, a special treat for reaching the fantastic achievement of 50 times volunteering!

I wasn’t the only one marking a running milestone today. Rick Jones was doing his 100th parkrun and Jonathan Heyes was doing his 50th parkrun. Well done to you both.
We were joined by a further 220 parkrunners, of whom 29 were first timers here. 35 of you managed a pb on this course. Laura Elizabeth Barber got a superb pb time of 19.27 on her 39th parkrun at Wythenshawe. George Horsfall, who is under 10 years old got a great new best time of 21.48 at his 40th Wythenshawe parkrun. Well done to Chris Burrows and Gemma Hewitt who have run 50 or more times at Wythenshawe and got a pb today.

Also a shout out to my friend Jennifer Simpson for going under 24minutes for the first time. And special well done to Rob Todd for setting what we believe to be a parkrun on crutches course record!

We like our pleasing numerical times at Wythenshawe (these things you learn after 100 times running here!) So I have to mention a few – Matthew Bell 23:45, Jared Paulson 24:24, David Waddell 24:42, John Ryan 27:27, Rosie Sullivan and Diane Lawlor both with 33:44 were a few I liked. But sadly no one got todays date as a time (24:22).
Welcome to our visitors too. I can see from the results that John Dimante who has run an impressive 444 parkruns was visiting from Bromley. Serena Ward joined us from Fulham. Alison Medlicott was running with us for the first time for her 320th parkrun. If you were visiting us from far afield today, we hope you enjoyed your visit to our parkrun.
It feels like a very long time since I ran my first ever parkrun, at Bramhall in 2008. Looking back I can’t believe there were Saturday mornings where I voluntarily opted to stay in bed rather than come to parkrun or decided it was too cold. Sometimes as you get older your priorities change and being without parkrun for over a year due to the pandemic has made us appreciate it even more. It is also enjoyable having all the unofficial challenges to complete – for those of you that enjoy this like me, today’s event was a prime number!
I’ve also been determined to volunteer more following the restart of parkrun and since then I have been a marshal, a scanner, a tail walker, a car park marshal, have done set up, sorted out tokens and now written the run report. If you want to be a high-vis hero too, all you have to do is email wythenshawe@parkrun.com.
This week the event could not have gone ahead without the services of Andy Holloway, Vicki Cleall, Richard Pavey, Dan Martell, Amanda Martell, Andy Blackburn, Beth Evens, Samantha Rose, Beverley Goodwin, Jonathan Butcher, Thomas Pavey, Sam McGrath, Nessa Hand, Lisa Beattie, Jonathan Till, Jane Gavin, Claire Mulvenna, Norma Burgess, Hayley Gavin, Jodie Lewyewpha, Libby Day, Fleur Gregory, Isaac Bettey, Vishnu Pandaraparambath, Paul Tomlinson and David Tomlinson, so we are very grateful to you all.
Just a reminder about rules new and old at parkrun. The new one concerning dogs is ‘One dog on a short, handheld, non-extendable lead by the side of the participant, and within reach at all times. Care must also be taken to avoid tripping other parkrunners’. Don’t take your finish token home – I did this once and Andy wasn’t happy! And very importantly, don’t forget your barcode – if I had managed to remember mine one time several years ago I’d have been writing this report last week instead of today!
Good luck to all the Manchester Marathon runner tomorrow, see you at Wythenshawe again soon.

Claire Gwyer