parkruns
The first Saturday of the month saw 72 members either run or volunteer at parkrun. Johnson’s Tours offered a trip to Oxford with options of choosing between a tricky ‘O’ (Oxford parkrun) or ‘U’ (University Parks) for those alphabet chasers with 6 OPR members going along to one of those. Angharad Croot was first female finisher at Maesteg whilst John Burridge ran the fastest time of the day with a 19:47 for second position at the Star Wars themed Aberfields parkrun.
Weekend two of the month saw 84 members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. Julie Ransom and Shawn Cullen completed their parkrun alphabets at Quakers Walk which I believe might leave me as having the highest number of tourisms (112) without yet being a parkrun ‘alphabeteer’. Karen Norman ran at Zuiderpark parkrun in the Netherlands which has become one of the most popular parkruns for our alphabet chasers to get their ‘Z’. Freya and Alison Allen were at Central parkrun in Plymouth ahead of a Half Marathon the next day. There was an unusually large attendance for no apparent reason at Aberfields with 37 OPR members making up a high overall attendance for Aberfields of 105 finishers. Jamie Verran picked up the first finisher token for the first time in 51 weeks as he continues his return from a long standing injury. Andrew Davis smashed his PB with a 24:12 at the same event.
Onto the third Saturday of the month where we had a massive 90 members either run or volunteer at parkrun. Our fastest runner of the day was Daniel Richards with a 17:22 to finish 3rd overall of the 667 runners Porthcawl which was just 2 finishers off their record attendance. John Burridge ran 18:18 at Swansea Bay for his second fastest ever parkrun time after a 18:12 at the same venue almost 4 years ago. It did get him an age grade percentage of 75.68% which was only beaten on the day by Gareth Richards who ran 18:52 at the same parkrun for a 79.42% age grading. We also had some international tourism with Sally Pensom running at Mura di Lucca parkrun in Italy.
Saturday number 4 saw a record breaking 95 members either run or volunteer at a parkrun – almost half of our membership. Gareth Davies became the 18th member to join the 250 club with 247 of those at Porthcawl where he of course celebrated the milestone. Alison Allen was first female finisher at Aberfields which had a good turnout of OPR members with opportunities running out for people to complete that one for the Team Challenge.
May saw an extra opportunity to do a parkrun with Johnson’s Tours offering a trip to Finland for a Thursday parkrun. Karl was joined by Sally Pensom, Sarah Davies, Melanie Thomas and Dawn Hopkins at Tokoimranta parkrun.
The final Saturday of the month saw 90 members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. Johnson’s tours headed from Finland to Austria to visit Donaupark parkrun with the same 5 OPR members getting a second international parkrun in the space of 3 days. Nick Harris was in Glasgow for Queen’s parkrun. Our fastest runner of the day was Thomas Daly with a 18:51 at Porthcawl which again had an attendance only a few short of their record. Gareth Davies celebrated his 250th parkrun at Porthcawl and became the 18th member of the club to reach the milestone.
Races
5K’s
The 5K season is upon us where there’s pretty much a local-ish 5K every week between May and September with the likes of Aberavon, Swansea Bay, SSAFA and other one off events. The first big one of this year was the Cardiff Race for Victory where we had 18 members cross the finish line lead home by Toby Kearns in 17:52. Emyr Bissmire, who started a run streak at the start of this year which is still continuing, ran a PB of 18:06. Rhodri Thomas ran a PB of 18:48. Willow Hughes moves herself up to 3rd on the fastest ever female time by an OPR member with a 20:13 PB. You could argue she is now our fastest female in the club although Bethan Moor ran some sub 20’s as a teenager before joining the club so depends how you look at it. There was also a PB for another runner who has run every day this year with Jo Jenkins following up a great run just a few days earlier at Sandy Bowl which showed a ‘Strava PB’ for the 5K to make it official and clock a 23:56 official 5K race PB almost 7 years to the day after her last 5K PB of 24:06.
The first event of the Swansea Bay 5K series saw 19 OPR finishers with Paul Teesdale clocking a 16:52 – just 2 seconds outside his PB which was also in Swansea, but on the parkrun course just a couple of months previous. There were PB’s on the night for Angharad Croot, Hattie James and John Batchelor on what was an unusually calm evening in terms of the wind we usual face on those events, but as a result was very warm and humid.
The Dunbar-Bowen’s took on the first race of the Cardiff SSAFA series with Claire clocking 23:18 and Lee continuing his excellent form with a PB of 24:00.
10K’s
Caerphilly 10K saw former member Angelo Doria run a breath taking 33:06 as he was called up to represent the South Wales region again. I’m sure we all wish Nico all the best and will be watching his progress with interest. Gareth Richards was our fastest current member with 42:11 and it was 50+ 1-2-3 for OPR finishers with Keith Coleman and Dai Kembery up next. Rhys Bradley, Fiona Drysdale, Karl Johnson, Sharon Pritchard and Debbie Bennion completed our finishers on the day. We had 2 runners at the Treforest 10K with Keith Coleman running just under 45 minutes whilst Jay Howells ran just under 54 minutes.
Half Marathons
Chris Wintle took on the Gower Half Marathon over a tough, off road, hilly course. We had 3 runners at the Bristol HM with Jakub Gzik, Katarzyna Krzeminska and Martin Beard all finishing between 2:02 and 2:09. As mentioned earlier, Alison and Freya were in Plymouth for the ‘Ocean City Running Festival’.
Phoenix South Wales Running Events
As mentioned in a previous blog, Phoenix Running Events (nothing to do with OPR) have set up several regional running events companies with the South Wales group starting off with an event at the end of March. In May they had another two events. The first of which saw Denise Bradley run 3 loops to complete 10 miles with Chris Pratt running the marathon distance at the ‘Dragonfly’ event at the start of May. Then a bigger turnout for a Cardiff Bay ‘Dragon’s Eye’ event with out and backs across the barrage where we had 6 runners. Four completed the Half Marathon distance including Danny Ridley, Chris Richards, Sharon Pritchard and Jade Bazylkiewicz. Jade had turned up with the intention of doing 5K but enjoyed it that much that she did 4 for a Half Marathon. Chris Pratt ticked off his second Marathon of the month, whilst Leanne Parsons ran an impressive 9 laps to tick off an ultra at 29.5 miles in total.
Other events
Gareth Thomas and Rhiain Casseldine-Forman took on a quirky event that involved running 5K on the hour for 5 hours. Kevin Raymond took on Ras y Gadair which is amongst the toughest fell races in the UK with over 3,000 feet of elevation in just 11 miles. Since Kev’s move to North Wales, he has clocked up almost 60,000 feet of elevation so far this year – the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest… twice… from sea level! Melanie Thomas took on her second Ultra of the year and just 4 weeks after her first with the 30 mile HOWUM – a tough route with over 4,000 feet of elevation – to put that in perspective, Marathon Eryri (Snowdonia Marathon) is around 2,400 feet. Mel was joined by ultra running newbie, Dawn Hopkins who had been the only runner in our top 10 events table not to have completed an ultra. Although I normally don’t mention non-running related endeavours on here, I think it’s worth pointing out that just a week later, Dawn did the CARTEN (Cardiff to Tenby) 100 mile bike ride as well!
BCRL
There were two events in May to kick off the 2025 BCRL season, starting with an unbelievable 104 OPR finishers at Sandy Bowl on the first of the month. We drafted in a second claim member, James Griffiths who lead our members back in 16:36 taking third place overall. Paul Teesdale would have been close to a 5K PB with 17:18 on the 3.25 mile course as would have multiple other members. Well done to our top 10 male scorers – Paul T, Toby Kearns, Thomas Daly, John Burridge, Gareth Richards, Jonathan Matthews, Jamie Verran, Rhodri Thomas and Kieron Burridge. There were also fantastic performances from our top 10 female scorers with Katie Plimmer, Willow Hughes, Bethan Moor, Angharad Croot, Claire DB, Freya Allen, Jules Esmond, Jo Jenkins, Marina Konstantinova and Sarah Davies. With every finisher making a difference to the scoring, we secured 3rd spot on the night behind Bridgend and Porthcawl.
The second event took us just a few miles further along the coast to Rest Bay where we had 91 runners for the later start of 7:30pm due to the tides. Daniel Richards was our first runner back on this occasion, just ahead of James Griffiths and Paul Teesdale on the shorter than expected 2.8 mile course. Our top 10 men were rounded out by Toby Kearns, John Burridge, Thomas Daly, Emyr Bissmire, Gareth Richards, Gareth Battle and Jamie Verran. Our top 10 ladies were Katie Plimmer, Angharad Croot, Bethan Moor, Hattie James, Freya Allen, Sian Price, Jules Esmond, Jo Jenkins, Alison Allen and Marina Konstantinova. We were again third on the night with a very tight battle for first where Bridgend pipped Porthcawl by just two points.