Jan-15

It’s good to talk about festive running
I think I’m taking a bit of a chance with this month’s article, by talking about Christmas events at the
exact time of year when most of us enjoyed the celebrations enough to make us grateful to put
them behind us for another year, and also by talking about parkrun.....again. You all know that mine
and Barry’s love of parkrun knows no bounds and I’m not certain that I can say anything that hasn’t
already been said, but I need to share the Darwen Dashers on tour pre-Christmas outing to Ormskirk
parkrun on 13 th December.
Barry and I had visited Ormskirk last August. The course, which is on the playing fields of the new
Edge Hill University campus is reasonably flat and averages 80 runners each week. Every parkrun has
its individual traits and idiosyncrasies with Ormskirks’ being a pre-run motivational poem. In August
the story of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson offered inspiration to the more mature runners. On 13 th
December we were treated to a 3 rd century Chinese poem which translated into something relevant
to all of us on the start line that day. The Ormskirk parkrun Director loves the literary word and it set
the scene for a very stimulating run that day. He also had 2 younger marshals informing the cast of
Christmas runners what would happen to them if they weren’t wearing any Christmas attire. Those
who had been remiss enough not to wear anything festive were informed they could only avoid
being charged with bringing the parkrun family into disrepute, or worse still, having their barcode
torn up into tiny pieces by singing ‘jingle bells’ very loudly as they crossed the finish line. Fortunately
all 15 Dashers in attendance had entered into the Christmas spirit of things, as you can see from the
photos.
It was actually a good thing that Deborah Robinson and Chris Gosling, inventors of the Darwen
Dashers parkrun tour, had chosen for us to go to Ormskirk because it was so frosty and icy that all
the local parkruns bar Burnley were cancelled for safety reasons. What fun we had on the run with
lots of personal achievements: Jonny Bromilow, in a rather special festive Dashers hat that his Mum
had made for him, achieved the fastest time of the day and ran under 20 minutes for the first time at
a parkrun on this favourable course. Cath Fox managed the highest age grading of the day. Calvin
Ferguson gained a parkrun PB by over 2 minutes. George Thompson ran his fastest time for 5
months. I managed to get under 26 minutes for the first time since early October and the onset of
the lurgy. Chris Cash, Helen Jones, and Calum Rigby ran their fastest ever parkrun times and Tina
Kuczer and Sue Taylor, were returning to running after injury and clearly enjoying every moment.
The Ormskirk parkrun just kept on giving and after the run we continued the Christmas theme by
singing a couple of carols. Darwen Dashers got a special mention prior to enjoying the very generous
post run festive fodder and mulled wine. Some people, namely George Thompson and Cath Fox
tucked in particularly enthusiastically when they snuck off after the first carol!
Some people might think it’s not worth the effort of getting up at stupid o’clock on such a cold and
dark morning to drive for 40 minutes for a 5k run but I know everyone there that morning would beg
to differ, these are the experiences that feed the soul and make us forget our problems and realise
how fortunate we are. That’s the thing about parkrun, it’s not a race and it’s for everyone. It’s for
the great and better good. Nothing negative can be said about it. If you read the weekly national
parkrun report it’s full of stories from people whose lives have been transformed by taking up
running and joining the parkrun family. Running has had an epiphany, it’s seen the light. It’s no