parkrun
This 5 Saturday month saw huge numbers with 333 parkrun finishes by our members. International tourism included Karl visiting an Irish parkrun, Willow and Toby visiting Milano Nord parkrun in Italy, and regular tourists Sarah, Dawn and Melanie visiting a parkrun in Dublin. The Dublin parkrun was also Sarah’s 100th different parkrun venue making her only the 7th member to complete that milestone.
Other tourism in month included a group of our Maesteg regulars heading to Severn Bridge parkrun, a Runs podcast meet up at Bryn Bach parkrun, whilst Johnsons Tours headed to Riverside Walk and Aston Hall parkruns.
On the speedy side of things, Niki Puleio notched up a couple of first finishes at Maesteg. It was a good parkrun month for Jake Tasker with a course record 16:19 at Trelai parkrun, a 16:21 first finish on a long awaited return to Maesteg, and unbelievably not a course record, but a 15:24 first finish at Eden Project parkrun. There was some bad news for Jake though as his Aberfields parkrun which has stood from event 1 was broken on the first anniversary event.
The first year anniversary of Aberfields parkrun saw 32 members in attendance. Trelai was also a popular parkrun for our members in August with it being the venue for the club trail championship. Whilst the club team competition offered up points for volunteering at parkrun which certainly boosted volunteer credits for club members at both local 5k parkruns and at Bridgend juniors.
BCRL
The penultimate fixture of the 2024 BCRL season took us to Ogmore Castle for the Heol y Mynydd race. We had an amazing 90 runners for this one with Jake once again crossing the finish line in first place. In the team competition we finished 3rd out of the 6 six clubs with Bridgend bagging their 6th win out of 6 and Porthcawl just pipping us to runners up on the night. After 6 events we were still in second overall.
Races
The final of the three Aberavon Run4All 5K series saw 26 members take on the course. Connor Panting was our first member across the line with Rya Cowan-Davies our first female finisher. Laura Worrall continued her great form with another 5K PB having also got parkrun and other summer series 5K PB this year.
13 members ran at the 5K on the Bay in Swansea hosted by Tri Harder Triathlon Club. Paul Teesdale continues to smash PBs with almost every run since starting with the club as a 20 minute 5ker just a couple of months ago and ran an outstanding 17:11 to put himself well amongst the top 10 fastest in the club over that distance. Tom Mahoney was next up in an impressive sub 19. Sarah Davies was our first female coming in just under 24 minutes whilst there was another 5K PB for Laura Worrall.
Nick Harris took on the CPR (Cardiff Penath Challenge) for the 3rd (fourth?) time. This involves running 5 events in just 30 hours around the Pontcanna / Bute Park / Llandaff Fields area over August Bank Holiday. The distance of the 5 events adds up to 26.2 mile with the final results being your total time for all 5 events added together. I’ve done it a couple of times and it’s a great challenge. You can definitely pick out those that do it year after year who’ve mastered the tactics and don’t go all out on the first couple of events and have something in reserve for day 2.
The Bank Holiday weekend also saw the Beast of Bryn races with 5 of our ladies taking on the 6 miler whilst 5 of our men took on the 10 mile route.
Other races in August included Kris Denholm running the Leominster 10K, Denise Bradley at the Crickhowell 10K and Lee and Claire DB at Frome Half Marathon. Car Walsh added another ultra to his list with the Beast of Llangattock 32 mile Ultra.