A cold and windy Pocket park met us on Saturday. 115 people ran walked or jogged and 28 people volunteered. As Stephen (this weeks run director) guessed, this weekend saw the lowest attendance at Pocket parkrun since it started in June - in fact, the three lowest attendances have occoured this month! The cold and rain haven’t put everyone off though: this week 25 parkrunners joined us for the first time and 28 ran a new PB.

118 walkers, joggers and runners joined us on a rather chilly parkrunDay for the 26th parkrun in Pocket park. 18 people pushed through the cold (and wind) to set new PBs and 20 people joined us for the first time - including 3 for their first ever parkrun.

A windy, rainy and slippy Pocket park greeted our 142 parkrunners and 27 volunteers this Saturday. Of those 142 runners, walkers and joggers, 22 were first timers here in Pocket parkrun and 28 managed PBs despite the harsh conditions. Special shoutout to Nikki McSeveney, Roxan Alexander, Sam Mahoney who perhaps could have chosen a better morning to run their first parkruns!

Rather than starting with the running stats this week, I’m going to change things up a bit and first say thank you to our 22 volunteers who helped out at Pocket parkrun this weekend: Barry Robinson, Becki Barnett, Caroline Henderson, Caroline Holmes, Christopher Ferguson, Christopher Skepper, Elizabeth Dalrymple, James Holmes, Julia Page, Kathy Unwin, Kenny Leckie, Kirstie Buck, Kirsty Rapley, Mark Crane, Norma Leckie, Sarah Tully, Stephen Ferguson, Steve Moore, Steven Barnett and this week’s run directors, Charlotte Simpson and Joanne Carrington.

157 runners, joggers and walkers joined us on Saturday morning for the 23rd Pocket parkrun. The sun kept threatening to emerge from behind the clouds but it remained obscured for the duration of the event. Joining us this morning were a variety of superheros, from Spider-man to Batman to Superman. I think I also saw the Joker running in memory of Stan Lee, who passed away on Monday. Congratulations to all of them, I don’t know how you managed in your various costumes! Also joining us were 11 people running their first ever parkrun and 8 people who were running in Pocket park for the first time. Of the 135 who had come along before, 64 (just shy of half)  managed a new PB, of whom 12 were junior runners. On to the first finishers. Male first finisher was Chris Butterworth finishing in a new PB of 17:43 and female first finisher was Olivia Hooper who also achieved a new PB in a time of 21:11. The runner with the highest age grade this week was Faith Taylor, an under 10 who managed an astonishing 75.24% and a PB of 22:41, putting all us older runners to shame…