parkruns
The first 21 weeks of the year have saw the club clock up 1,494 parkrun finishes at 406 parkrun events. parkrun tourism has continued for many in the club and between us we’ve already visited parkruns in Wales, England, Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Germany, Finland, USA and Norway which is well over half of the countries that currently have parkruns.
We’ve had lots of milestones already with Rhodri Davies, Natasha Pask, Andrew Davis, and Ben McCrum all celebrating their 50th parkrun. Marina Konstantinova and Jason Griffiths have both celebrated their 100th parkruns. Sarah Davies, Niki Puleio, Chris Stanlake and Denise Bradley have all celebrated their 250th parkruns.
On the speedy side of things, we’ve notched up 18 first finishes at parkruns with most of them being at Aberfields or Maesteg with a couple at Porthcawl. Rhys Hopkins is the latest member to join the first finisher overall list whilst Emyr Bissmire, John Burridge and Paul Teesdale are all tied with 3 first finishes each so far this year. The fastest parkrun time so far this year is Paul Teesdale with 17:00 at Porthcawl. On the ladies side we’ve had 9 first female finishers with Jade Bazylkiewicz being the latest to join the list. Angharad Croot and Chloe Richards are tied with 3 first female finishes each with Chloe having the fastest female parkrun time of the year at 20:30 which was set at Porthcawl.
Races
5K
The 5K season is just starting with the first big event being the Paul Popham / Swansea Bay 5K where we had 20 finishers for the first event of the series. Emyr Bissmire was finally given an official sub 18 finish with 17:55 after he did it in Nos Galan but they only published Gun Times and not Chip. Lisa Davies ran a PB of 23:49 and Leanne Parsons ran a PB of 27:11.
The first SSAFA 5K of the year proved that this is one of the fastest races in the calendar with Paul Teesdale smashing his PB with a 16:12 to become the second fastest member of the club. John Burridge annihilated his 5K PB with a 17:40 (a 32 second improvement). Aled Hughes ran 18:05. Chloe Richards became only the second female member in the clubs history to run sub 20 with a 19:59 with some precision pacing from Toby Kearns and Jonathan Matthews. Of our 7 runners on the night, I was last with 20:22 which was my fastest time in almost a year. The average time of our 7 runners on the night was 18:55.
5 miles / 10 miles
Just one 5 miler so far this year with 4 members completing the Severn Bridge Twilight Race. Whilst 10 milers are normally quite rare, we’ve actually had 7 already this year. Paul Harris and Terri-Leigh Roche did a new 10 miler in Swansea and four members took on the San Dom race at that distance. John Burridge ran a new 10 mile PB of 1:02:04 at the Reverse 10 where Niki Puleio also ran. There have also been a few trail 10 milers (although trail usually means the distance could be a mile either way) with Fiona Drysdale at the Sirhowy Challenge, 10 members taking on the Vale, 8 at the Riverbank Rollick and 8 at a trail race in Monmouth.
10K
We’ve already had members completing 10K’s at a dozen different events this year. Wayne Hayhurst kicked us off with the Chepstow 10K before Rhys Hopkins ran a PB of 43:53 at Longleat 10K with Chris Pratt and Dawn Hopkins also completing that one. Jonathan Matthews love for the trails took him to a 10K night race in Westonbirt. Back on the roads, we had 5 members complete the Llanelli 10K including a PB for Rachel Hope-Williams. Seven members took on the Bath Two Tunnels 10K whilst the Sheards have ran both the London Winter 10K and Lincoln 10K. Sharon and Debbie took on Pontypool 10K whilst our regular trail runners took on the tough Caerphilly Trail 10K. The Caerphilly 10K road race saw 5 of our members complete the course. We’ve also had another 4 members recently complete the Worcester 10K. Treforest 10K took place in an unprecedented May heatwave yet John Burridge was only a couple of seconds off his PB with 37:41 as the first of our 5 finishers on that day. We also had Martin and Holly Atkinson running the Great West Run 10K on the same day with it being Holly’s debut 10K event.
The biggest 10K’s so far this year have been the usual Run 4 Wales events at Newport and an earlier in the year date for Barry 10K. At Newport we had 19 finishers with Tom Daly leading the OPR members back in an outstanding 35:50. There were also PB’s for the in form Ashley Howells (47:25) who had also PB’d at the Two Tunnels 10K and also ran several parkrun PB’s this year, Rhodri Davies and Martin Atkinson. At Barry we had 26 finishers and despite the bumpy course there were PB’s for new members Georgia and Rhydian Jones. Lisa Davies also bagged herself a PB at Barry (just 4 days after a 5K PB) and there was a second 10K PB of the year for Martin Atkinson.
Half Marathons
We’ve actually averaged over one Half Marathon a week with 25 different Half Marathons in the first 20 weeks of the year. We have a number of members looking to complete the Super Halves series which resulted in us having members at Lisbon, Prague and Berlin Half Marathons so far this year. With the looped events from South Wales Phoenix and Saturn Running we’ve had another four Half Marathon events with 7 finishes. Other events have included Chepstow, Taunton, Great Welsh, Bath (which saw another Ashley Howells PB), Liverpool and Merthyr. Our North Wales second claim member, Kevin Raymond has completed both Llandudno and Anglesey Half Marathons so far this year. At the Gloucester Half, Willow Hughes ran an outstanding PB of 1:33:15 whilst member at the time, Freya Allen also ran a huge PB with a 1:41:26. Jonathan Matthews recently headed to Scotland for the Edinburgh Marathon with a 1:35 finish.
There’s also been a few trail Half Marathons with Gareth Battle finishing 2nd overall in the Brechfa Trail HM and first veteran at the Radar Trail HM where Gareth Jones also ran. Whilst still a member, Katie Plimmer ran both the Forest of Dean and Nant Yr Arian trail Half Marathons with high finishing positions in both.
The two bigger Half Marathons of the year so far have been Llanelli and Newport. We had 11 runners at Llanelli where John Burridge lead the Phoenix runners back in a PB of 1:20:32. There were also PB’s for Katie Plimmer with a female club record time of 1:31:40, Lisa Davies with 1:54:33 and Amelia Lewis with 2:07:30. At Newport we had 12 runners with Paul Teesdale leading the way with a PB of 1:14:46 whilst there were also PB’s for Angharad Croot (1:39:26) and John Batchelor (2:01:42).
Marathons
It’s already been a busy year for Marathons with 18 different marathon completed by our members. 9 of these have been by Chris Pratt who is aiming for 26 marathons this year on the long quest to 100 marathons in total. It’s a wonder he’s not dizzy as so far those marathons have included 4 Phoenix Running looped events, a Car Park Marathon that literally involved running marathon distance up and down a multi-story car park and 105.5 laps of a running track in Barry. He has done a some more conventional marathons with Seville Marathon, Great Welsh and Southampton as well.
Our usual multi marathon enthusiasts, Carl Walsh and Danny Ridley have also been busy this year and have both completed the Lost City Marathon in Mexico, Rome Marathon and most recently the Great Wall of China Marathon which includes over 5,000 steps!
Continuing on the overseas marathons we had Aled Hughes at the Boston Marathon where he ran 3:09:18. Although not a member at the time of writing (or during that event), I don’t think I can not mention long time member Niki Puleio who ran an outstanding PB of 2:42:24.
Continuing on the theme of PB’s, one of the performances of the year so far has to go to John Burridge who ran his first ever sub 3 marathon with a 2:59:03 at the Great Welsh Marathon.
The three big marathons so far this year have been Manchester, Newport and London which were all just a couple of weeks apart. At Newport, Aled Jenkins ran a new club record time of 2:27:39 finishing 7th overall. Luke Davis ran 4:11:41 in his debut marathon whilst Fiona Drysdale finished in 4:37:36. Meanwhile on the same day in Manchester we had 9 runners with Paul Teesdale running a 2:54:00 marathon debut, it was another marathon PB for Tom Mahoney, a new (current member) female record for Willow Hughes with a debut marathon of 3:35:45 with another amazing debut marathon time coming from Angharad Croot with 3:47:53. The Dunbar-Bowen’s ran together with Lee clocking 4:53:41 on his marathon debut.
We also had 9 runners at the London Marathon where Wayne Hayhurst was our first finisher in 3:19:16. Our club ballot representatives Gareth Richards (who was on his 5th marathon of the year and second in two weeks) ran 3:21:34 with our second club ballot representative, Katie Plimmer running a PB of 3:31:58. Neil Price finished just 3 seconds behind Gareth whilst there was a PB for Amelia Lewis. Chris Roberts ran just over 5 hours whilst Rhiain Casseldine-Forman ran a PB of 5:41 before the day was capped off with Darren Talbot and Darija Keenor finishing in 6:11 and 6:20 respectively.
Ultra Marathons
I kicked off the ultras this year with the Fallout Ultra. Another one of my unusual ultras whereby you need to ‘escape’ in any direction as far as possible with a ‘last person standing’ element to it as a cloud chases you. I ended up with the 5th longest distance with 64.6 miles finishing at around 1am.
Carl Walsh has signed up for Pegasus Grand Slam this year which involves running 6 Ultra-Marathons all roughly one month apart from April to September with a combined distance of 210 miles (average of 35 miles each). At the time of writing this, he has completed the BOWUM 30 miler and HOWUM 30 miler. The next one will be the VOGUM which is a 40 miler in June.
Our most popular ultra in the clubs history is the Vale 32 miler which Carl also did despite having done the first of the Pegasus Grand Slam event the week before. Jon Matthews ran his debut ultra in tough conditions including hailstones during the event, whilst Nick Harris who first run this event back in 2016 as his first ultra and went on to run two 100 milers in the years that followed, completed his first ultra in 4 years.
Finally we had Jade Bazlkiewicz who not only completed her first marathon recently but then went on to complete her first ultra with a 50K mile event.
Other Events
The trail championships have seen 9 runners at a freezing cold (almost cancelled) Chepstow Night Race in January, 5 runners at the Sodbury Slog and 7 runners at the Bluebell Blunder 7K. It’s shaping up to be one of the closest years ever in both the male and female competitions.
There’s been plenty of other trail races besides as we started the year with 6 members at the Kenfig Prince of Wales race, 8 members at the CF64 trail race, Leanne Parsons took on the Hanham Horror 6 miler, Lisa Davies and Linda Harris completed the Vale 18.5 miler and Nick Harris completed the Pentyrch Hill race which he’s done almost every year since joining the club 13 years ago. Our North Wales representative Kevin Raymond also had another crack at the Ras y Gader (Cader Idris Mountain Race) which he has now done multiple times.
On the roads we’ve had several South Wales Phoenix looped events where members have run anything from 1 lap (usually 3.3 miles) up to marathon distance and everything in between. We had 3 runners at the Lliswerry 8. Nine members took on the San Dom 20 miler – all of which were gearing up for marathons at Manchester, Newport, London or Boston.
Cross Country
The start of the year saw some great attendances at the final three West Glam XC events with 18 members at Margam, 20 members crossing the finish line at Kenfig and 17 at the new event in Tairgwaith. Well done to Angharad Croot, Emyr Bissmire and Natasha Pask who completed all 5 fixtures in the 25/26 season. Denise Bradley, Gareth Jones, Marina Konstantinova, Rhodri Davies and second claim member Rory Griffiths all completed 4 out of 5. We had 47 different members represent us during the season and would love to see that increase even more for the 26/27 season. In the final standings, the men finished 2nd in division 2 which should see them promoted to the top division, whilst the ladies finished 4th and have a great opportunity to challenge for promotion from division 2 next season.
BCRL
The Bridgend County Running League is underway with just the one fixture so far at Sandy Bowl. Given a drop in overall membership numbers, I think we were pleasantly surprised to see 80 finishers at the first event which was around half of our membership at that point with more new members and people re-joining since that event. Nicky Bennett lead the OPR runners across the line closely followed by Paul Teesdale. Our top 10 male scorers were completed by Tom Daly, Emyr Bissmire, John Burridge, returning member Ryan Evans, Jamie Verran, Tom Mahoney, Rhys Hopkins and Toby Kearns. In her first BCRL with the club, Chloe Richards was our first finisher followed by Angharad Croot, Lisa Davies, Claire DB and Jo Jenkins. Our top 10 female scorers were completed by Jules Esmond, Dawn Hopkins, Fiona Drysdale, Sarah Davies and Beverley Soles.
Presentation Night
In early March we celebrated our achievements for 2025 at the Richard Price Centre with a great turnout on the night. 34 awards were presented with 23 different winners. Our big winners of the night were Jo Jenkins who took away 4 awards for a fantastic 2025 that included running at least 5K every day for the entire year, multiple PB’s at various distances and completing her first 50 mile ultra. Katie Plimmer took away 3 trophies to take her overall tally in just 3 years to 10 awards in total for a year that included multiple PB’s, first finishes, marathon records and dominated the trail championships to the point where she would have beaten the male winner if it wasn’t split into male and female – I can safely point that out seeing as the male winner was me. Angharad Croot also took away 3 awards with an unprecedented duo of both Best Newcomer and Most Improved as well as a trail championship second place. Other multiple winners included Emyr Bissmire (including the top prize), Paul Teesdale, Sarah Davies, Natasha Pask and myself.
The full list of Presentation Night winners
Runners Runner Winner: Emyr Bissmire
Runners Runner 2nd place: Jo Jenkins
Runners Runner 3rd place: Katie Plimmer
Club Runner: Paul Teesdale
Best Senior Male: Paul Teesdale
Best Senior Female: Katie Plimmer
Best Vet Male: John Burridge
Best Vet Female: Jo Jenkins
Best Super-Vet Male: Gareth Richards
Best Super-Vet Female: Sarah Davies
Most Improved Male: Lee Dunbar-Bowen
Most Improved Female: Angharad Croot
Best Newcomer Male: Rhodri Davies
Best Newcomer Female: Angharad Croot
Club Championship Trail – Male Winner: Gareth Jenkins
Club Championship Trail – Male 2nd place: David Sheard
Club Championship Trail – Male 3rd place: Ben Batchelor
Club Championship Trail – Female Winner: Katie Plimmer
Club Championship Trail – Female 2nd place: Angharad Croot
Club Championship Trail – Female 3rd place: Sarah Davies
Male Marathon: Carl Walsh
Female Marathon: Katie Plimmer
Male Ultra: Gareth Jenkins
Female Ultra: Jo Jenkins
Zero to Hero: Olivia Corbett
Team Award – 1st place: Ben Williams & Caryn Hicks
Team Award – 2nd place: Natasha Pask & Rosie Plimmer
Team Award – 3rd place: Jayne Bissmire & Alison Allen
Spirit of the Phoenix: Tom Mahoney
Chairmans Award: Natasha Pask
Outstanding Achievement: Emyr Bissmire / Jo Jenkins
AGM
The clubs AGM took place at the end of March with a number of changes to the elected members.
Committee
Chair: Dawn Hopkins
Vice Chair: David Kembery
Secretary: Claire Miles
Treasurer: Ria Ross
Membership Secretary: Ben Batchelor
Social Secretary: Jayne Kembery
Kit Offier: Toby Kearns
Training Co-ordinator: Paul Teesdale
Communications and Media Officer: Sarah Davies
Juniors Representative: Liz Davis
General Committee Member: Shawn Cullen
General Committee Member: Julie Ransom
General Committee Member: Jon Matthews
General Committee Member: Natasha Pask
Team Captains
Jamie Verran
Gareth Jenkins
Angharad Croot
Olivia Corbett
Welfare Officers
Gareth Thomas
Rhodri Thomas
Helen Griffiths
Complaints Officer: Debbie Bennion
Race Director: Chris Stanlake
Volunteer Co-ordinator: Martin Atkinson
Training Sessions and Zero to Hero
The club is continuing to encourage participation at training sessions and we recently had one of our biggest ever turnouts with a recce of the new Aberfields parkrun course. There continues to be a wide range of sessions from strength and conditioning classes on a Monday, then miles or efforts sessions across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at various locations with Trail options on a Sunday. We’ve recently started our latest Zero to Hero program with 11 new faces turning up for the first session and then having to battle a heatwave in week 2.
Captains Runners of the Month(s)
This year we are reintroducing the Runners of the Month to the blog. This time it will be the captains group that will choose a number of runners for each blog published. All of those picked throughout the year will go on a shortlist for the members to vote on the overall winner at presentation night as a brand new award. As this is the first blog of the year and covers a significant period then there’s no way we could narrow it down to just a couple of people – in fact I think our shortlist included 18 members! We’ve managed to narrow it down to 3 male and 3 female members. So in no particular order, these are who we have chosen and some of the reasons why.
Ashley Howells
An absolutely outstanding start to the year for Ashley. Having already started returning to his best times during 2025, Ashley has really pushed on in the early months of 2026. So far he has improved his parkrun / 5K time from 24:44 to 22:24 with four parkrun PB’s already this year. He has also achieved 10K PB’s at both Bath 2 Tunnels and Newport 10K as well as a Half Marathon PB at Bath. Ashley now has his sights set on Welsh Castles where he will be making his second appearance for the club.
John Burridge
An PB machine this year. An impressive training block for the Great Welsh Marathon saw John run a huge 10 mile PB at the Reverse 10 and a Half Marathon PB at Llanelli. He then went on to run a sub 3 hour marathon at the Great Welsh event with a time of 2:59:03 – a PB by more than 22 minutes and almost 11 years after his first marathon finish. John didn’t stop there though – he’s since obliterated his 5K PB with a 17:40 finish at the first SSAFA 5K event of the year. Obliterated isn’t even doing it justice as he took 32 seconds off his previous PB. Worth pointing out that this is all after John was out of action for a significant amount of time and required knee surgery just a couple of years ago.
Martin Atkinson
Whilst Martin has also had PB’s this year with a number of improvements at 5K and 10K, the captains wanted to recognise how he has embraced being a member since joining the club. Martin regularly attends training sessions and put his name forward for multiple roles at the most recent AGM and is now our volunteer co-ordinator. Martin did the qualifier for Rack Raid and Welsh Castles and will now be representing the club at Welsh Castles. He has also offered to support both events.
Lisa Davies
Like John and Ashley, , Lisa has been ringing that PB bell on a regular basis so far this year. A half marathon PB in Llanelli of 1:54:33 was first up in February. In early April, Lisa completed the Vale 18.5 miler but unfortunately injured herself along the way resulting in having to take a couple of weeks off. Despite this, Lisa came back even stronger and was our third female finisher at the first BCRL event at Sandy Bowl with what would have been a 5K PB along the way. She then made that 5K PB official with a 23:49 at Swansea Bay 5K before getting a 10K PB at Barry 10K just a few days later.
Chloe Richards
Whilst we want to pick a range of abilities for our captains choices this year, we had to include our current fastest female runner in the club (at 5K anyway). Chloe consistently runs fast times at parkrun each week with 12 top three finishes across her 15 parkruns to date in 2026. Chloe was also our first female finisher in her debut BCRL event with the club at Sandy Bowl and fifth female finisher overall in the race against some of the best female runners in the county. However, there’s one recent performance that has her name written in the OPR history books as she became only the second female in the clubs history and the only current member to run a sub 20 5K as she clocked 19:59 at the first SSAFA race of the 2026 series. Chloe also turned up to help out at the first Zero to Hero session and is a regular at OPR training sessions.
Jade Bazylkiewicz
For this one, lets rewind to just over two years ago when Jade hobbled into Presentation Night on crutches (straight from hospital) after suffering a serious leg injury. The determination to carry on was clearly there from the outset. Recovery was slow and painful but I’m not sure I can think of anyone better to take the recovery seriously and do everything they can to get back to fitness. So why the recognition now? Well, after having to spend the best part of 18 months on the side lines with just a couple of events here and there – Jade is back. Not only is she back but she completed her first marathon (a hilly off road one of course) and a 50K ultra in Croatia as part of a Rat Race adventure event consisting of several different disciplines over several days. Jade recently picked up a first female finish at Aberfields and has participated in the recent trail championship events which she won back in 2023.
Next up
It’s a huge summer of running for the club which starts with the 100 mile Rack Raid Relays this weekend and then the 200 mile Welsh Castles Relay the weekend after. We’ve got 6 BCRL’s within the space of 3 months, plenty of 5Ks with the Swansea Bay, Aberavon and SSAFA series plus we’re looking at a huge attendance at this years Cosmeston Relays. Whatever your goals and aspirations are for this summer, I look forward to following the progress and celebrating everyone in future blogs.