03/06/2023: These posts from the early Parkrun days will be slightly sporadic as I hadn’t made a note of all of them. However, Parkrun no.10 was a special one. It culminated the last 10 weeks of Uni that we had taken up Parkrun and 13 of us ran in the last one before we all left for our hometowns, cheered on by quite a few course mates who made the sensible decision to have a coffee instead of running a 5K at 9am… I personally know which option I’d prefer though 😉. This happened to be Bognor Regis Parkrun’s 9th anniversary, so being a seaside town they ran a fancy dress competition. We all turn up in a variety of Hawaiian shirts, swim shorts, goggles, etc. however, being on a Musical Theatre course, we of course had one member (Jordan) who went all out and ran the entire 5K in Armbands, An inflatable tyre and Flippers!!!! He of course won the box of Heroes and managed to do it in under 50 minutes which considering his footwear was mightily impressive.
Personally for me, I had hit a PB of 21:45 a few weeks before, which had been a lovely improvement from my 25:10. So I was trying to break it before I left, however fell just short at 21:59, but Parkrun is certainly not all about PB’s and it was most certainly the most fun I’d had at a Parkrun to date and I knew it would be my last at Bognor for a long while so I was excited to know I would be exploring some new ones soon, as well as a bit gutted this would be the last Parkrun with the OG gang for a while.
We had some great times and my friends, particularly Lee, Sam and Cole had made massive improvements on their PB’s throughout our early Parkrun journey (Sam pipping me one week with a 21:44, Sprint finished like the king he is!). We returned a year later on a lads weekend (MT lads… so probs not the booze up that you have in mind) which will be heavily detailed in another post but it's core memories like this that make Parkrun the incredible event that it is and will continue to grow as such.
As a side note, I finished in 27th place which happens to be my lucky number, as my last Parkrun being a Uni student it was a very fitting way to end my 3 years.
Personal Stats and Rankings (As of 25/05/2024): Bognor Regis Parkrun
Current Course PB: 21:45
Course Events Attended: 11
Route (Terrain): 10
Route (Scenery): 6
Community & Atmosphere: 8
*Car Park (Price & Spaces): 2
*Cafe (Food & Price): 5
Overall: 31
*Out of 5
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