“I am a person of strict principles. Fortunately, I am also highly negotiable” – Oscar Wilde
Good morning lovely Dashers. I hope that everyone is well and managed to survive the incredible storms that we experienced this weekend. Mother Nature is a powerful lady isn’t she? Hopefully you all managed to remain relatively intact and stayed warm and cozy indoors with no property damage. I think we were OK although I was concerned about the caravan in our garden – we didn’t have one on Friday!
Well done to everyone who still managed some activity outdoors, although most organised runs were off on Sunday so it’s a slightly truncated report this week. But of course, you Dashers aren’t deterred by a little breeze and 20 of you still managed to venture out to a parkrun on Saturday morning despite the weather. Great effort everyone – and none more so than John Randall who ran his 250th no less when galloping round Witton. A brilliant milestone John, many congratulations.
Of our 20 intrepid Dashers this week, 6 of you ran events for the first time but most stayed relatively local understandably. Conditions were not always conducive to speedy feet but we still had 2 Top-10ers with excellent running by the ever-reliable David Seddon (another magnificent first place - at Lytham Hall this time) and by Jordan Dashti who was 7th at Centre Vale (that must have been a tough track this week so well done!) David also ran another PB which was a feat matched by Katie Holden at Burnley. Brilliant stuff!
Generally difficult conditions everywhere meant that significant improvements in overall percentage scores for the Championships were hard to come by and so it proved this week. In fact there were no positional changes in either league table this week although, in the Men’s Championship both Bruce Elliott and Jez Turner ran superbly to close the gap even more on leader Martin Oldfield. There is now only 0.81 of a point between all 3 Dashers so it’s going to be so exciting right until the last week.
In the Ladies Championship, Carol Tweedale ran her 4th different qualifying course and Linda Coffey had a superb run at Worsley Woods (avoiding fallen foliage) to extend her lead at the top. Diane Dudgeon and Kerry Elliott are chasing hard but may need another storm at their backs to catch Linda now.
So, a great effort by everyone who braved the elements this weekend, at parkrun or otherwise, and hopefully we will be in calmer waters this week. Remarkably, we only have 5 weeks left of this years parkrun Championship (time flies when you are having fun….or in my case goes faster when you’re old) but a few quick times could yet change the outcomes. As yet, I’m not aware of any local cancellations – mind, I said that last week and look what happened! Regardless, have a great week, stay safe, don’t forget to book your Christmas party tickets and happy parkrunning!