In 2017, for the first time since it started, Ipswich juniors went ahead on January 1st as it was a Sunday. 38 little people joined us so it was definitely worth holding. Then it was a trip over to Kesgrave for the traditional New Years Day double where we were joined by 332 runners (133 of whom had already run at Ipswich 5km. A perfect way to start the year.
After all the voluntouring of previous years it’s hard to believe it took until the start of April to do some 5km touring. This time it was in Grampshire and Hilary wasn’t best pleased with the course as it is "undulating".
This was followed up by a couple of weeks at the home event during which time there were some pretty impressive stats for parkrun in both Ipswich/Kesgrave and for Suffolk as a whole.
The thought of these numbers locally and across Suffolk didn’t even come into consideration when Ipswich was set up.
We then continued our touring as a result of the London Marathon.
The hotel for Marathon weekend, was chosen with two things in mind 1 – Ease of getting to Marathon start line and more importantly 2 – Close to a parkrun. In the end we ended up at Bexley parkrun on VMLM eve and as has become fairly common when voluntouring, I was on timekeeper duties again.
At the end of the month the junior core team went out to celebrate receiving an award at the Town 102 Local Hero awards
May 6th and after continuous nagging we finally got Zakia along to a parkrun. Not convinced that any of them were taking it very seriously though. It was only another 2 years before event number 2 was completed!
Having purchased a race wheelchair a very important decision was made at the star of July.
Before that though I had a fantastic morning at Ipswich juniors on 16th July as I went round with some of the runners.
Afterwards I let some of the children and parents have a go in the chair.
As had become traditional for the local parkrun core teams, Ipswich, Kesgrave and Ipswich juniors we hosted a summer barbie at the end of the month. Including kids there were 63 on the guest list so it’s no surprise that we needed a few bar-b-ques
My thoughts then turned to my racechair debut at parkrun. Naturally enough I managed to persuade the Nemesis to come along and help me out. As Valantines had been my first event I felt it was only right that it should be my first as a wheelchair athlete. Despite having earnt it in 2013, this was also the first time I was able to take part in a parkrun event in my Red 50 milestone shirt.
Not surprisingly the day itself was very emotional for me.
Having carried out my debut, it was necessary for me to carry out a pilgrimage to the “wheelchair” Mecca of parkrun world – Dulwich. The course at Dulwich is almost 3 laps on a tarmacked circuit and as you can see in the picture below almost all the turns are very smooth and it is also almost pancake flat.
Having completed Valentines in 37:14 I was hoping to go a little bit quicker. As I was still relatively new to racechair pushing and as this was 3.1 miles, I did make good use of the ability to “freewheel”.
I was equally pleased and disappointed with my final time when it came through. My running PB at parkrun was completed on 14/05/2011 and stands at 28:38. This was at my 6th parkrun. At Dulwich I achieved an all time parkrun PB of 27:09. I know for certain that if I had freewheeled a little less I could have achieved sub 27:00!
The following week was wedding day so naturally enough we were at Ipswich parkrun first.
You never know who you will bump into at parkrun but it was still a shock to bump into Mark Flatman (Ipswich juniors core team) when you are on tour in Derbyshire, but that is exactly what happened –
Although it was reported about a week late, whilst we were at Markeaton parkrun something fantastic was occurring in Suffolk.
On Saturday 28th October the total distance ran at all the Suffolk 5km parkruns since Ipswich started on 8th September 2012 reached 1,000,000 kilometres.
The end of November that year saw a major announcement about Ipswich parkrun
After seeing it through the first 5 years the time was right to hand over the reins. I have left Grahams comments as they mean a lot to me.
During 2017 I completed 2 parkruns and recorded 83 volunteer credits. These were done at 21 events including 9 new ones, and 1 time I both ran and volunteered. This took my run total to 52 and my Volunteer number to 443, of which 25 times I did both. These were completed at 59 different events.