Whilst it’s probably long forgotten now after having some rain lately, it’s worth remembering whilst reading this that throughout the period of the parkruns and races below we experienced 5 heatwaves and there probably weren’t too many races where the temperature was below 25 degrees making some of these performances even more remarkable.
parkruns
June 2026 saw 278 parkrun finishes across 62 parkruns. Members joined Johnson’s tours to visit the Eden Project and Victoria Park, Newbury. There was more alphabet chasing with the Dunbar-Bowen’s heading to Glasgow to do Queen’s parkrun. Jeff Cadogan ran at Wimbledon Common parkrun which was the second ever parkrun venue after Bushy Park.
July 2026 saw 272 parkrun finishes across 75 parkruns. There were several visits to Llyn Llech Owain parkrun with that being the Trail Championship fixture for the month. Gareth Battle picked up a first place finish at Coed Cefn-Pwll-Du whilst Paul Teesdale picked up the first place token at Maesteg. Angharad Croot (twice), Marina Konstantinova and Willow Hughes all picked up first female finishes in month.
A 5 Saturday month in August saw 360 parkrun finishes across a massive 112 parkruns. The trail championship saw Cosmeston Lakes as a regular fixture in month. Further afield saw Chloe Richards run a parkrun in Italy whilst there were several weeks with members at over 20 different parkruns.
Over the last 3-4 months since the last blog update there’s been plenty of milestones with two 500 milestones in two weekends. First up was Kris Denholm who celebrated his with Johnson’s tours at the Eden Project, before David Sheard became our fifth member of the 500 parkrun club at his home event of Porthcawl – a venue where he ran for the 400th time this month as well. Since then we’ve had Tammie Clemett, Sally Pensom and Toby Kearns all run their 250th parkruns bringing it to 26 current members who have now reached that milestone. Angharad Croot, Kate Atkin, Jon Matthews, Rhiain Casseldine Forman and John Batchelor have all reached 100 parkruns bringing it to 68 current members who have now reached that milestone. With the imminent introduction of milestones for every 100 parkruns then we’re likely to see celebrations most weeks going forward.
Rack Raid
I posted the previous blog before the end of May so am including the Rack Raid report in this one. This years event included an extra stage (14) which joined up the finish of stage 13 with the venue at which the presentations happen. This also meant having an equal split of 7 men and 7 women in the team rather than the usual 7/6 split. All 14 runners completed the valley loop qualifier with a range of experience in the selected team from myself and Jo running Rack Raid for the 5th time to Rhodri Davies, Angharad Croot, Gareth Jones, Olivia Corbett, Jon Matthews and Rhodri Thomas all making their first appearance at Rack Raid. Leanne Parsons kicked off proceedings with Jules Esmond on the second leg. Rhodri D took on stage 3 before Willow Hughes ran our second fastest stage 4 with only Aled Hughes run on our debut in 2019 being faster for that stage. On her Rack Raid debut, Angharad Croot ran the fastest time of any of the ladies that have previously run stage 5 from our club. We then had a load of debutants in a row with Gareth Jones, Olivia Corbett and Jon Matthews. Jon took on the longest and arguably toughest stage of the day with a half marathon distance route with well over 1,000 feet of elevation. Dylan Panting, Luke Davis, myself and Marina Konstantinova took on stages 9-12 respectively. Rhodri Thomas smashed stage 13 and not only was our only top 10 finisher but finished in 3rd place finish out of the 30 runners. Jo Jenkins took on the new stage 14 with a much better finish amongst the crowds at the end rather than the previous stage finish which was restricted to those running and a few support vehicles only. The team finished 26th overall and a great day was had by all.
Welsh Castles
Just 5 days after Rack Raid, more than a dozen of our members were heading to North Wales on Friday afternoon / evening on the minibus or various support vehicles for our 4th year at Welsh Castles. The team included literally half of the Rack Raid team with 7 doing both events. Our nominated captain for the weekend was Tom Mahoney who kicked us off on the shorter than usual stage 1 due to some ongoing works. Nicky Bennett was up next with a club record on stage 2 before Paul Teesdale also ran a club record on the first mountain stage of the event. John Batchelor was next up with some friendly sibling rivalry at stage as Ben ran the same stage in 2024 – John won bragging rights with a quicker time although Ben has claimed it was much hotter conditions in 2024. Chloe Richards was our first female runner of the weekend and set a new club record for stage 5. Jon Matthews was the first of our Rack Raid runners to double up with doing Castles although after the toughest stage the previous week, he was at least rewarded with the flattest stage of the event for this one. Aled Hughes made his third Castles appearance taking on stage 7. Josh Parry had an interesting stage as not only had his partner Bethan Moor run that stage for us the previous year, but this year they were running against each other after Bethan’s move to CDF Runners. Whilst Bethan came out on top, there was some good news for Josh as he beat Bethan’s club record for that stage. The club stage records continued with Willow Hughes smashing the club record for stage 9 before Toby Kearns took on the 3rd mountain stage to finish off the day with another great performance.
Rhodri Thomas kicked off day 2 with the 4th of the mountain stages just a week after taking on an entirely uphill route in Rack Raid. Rhodri also became the only OPR member to represent us in all four Welsh Castles that we’ve competed in. Luke Davis made his 3rd Welsh Castles appearance just a week after also doing Rack Raid with stage 12. It was a Welsh Castles debut for Gareth Jones just a week after his Rack Raid debut. Gareth ran our fastest stage 13 making it 6 stage club records for this year. Stage 14 is the infamous Drovers, known as the toughest stage of the race due to both the length and elevation. John Burridge took on the challenge this year having run a brilliant stage 10 last year. In fact, he pushed so hard that he ended up in an ambulance afterward although thankfully all OK after a quick check up. Angharad Croot took on stage 15 in her second Castles outing and having also represented us a week earlier at Rack Raid. Emyr Bissmire took on the final mountain stage of the weekend with an excellent time on stage 16 in his first Castles appearance since our debut year in 2023. Club stalwart Nick Harris was rewarded with completing the qualifier with his first Castles appearance on the deceptive stage 17 which although is net downhill, has some testing climbs throughout. On stage 18 we had Ashley Howells who was making his second Castles appearance having run stage 19 in 2024. We had our 4th and final Castles debut of the weekend with Martin Atkinson taking on stage 19. Then I had the honour of finishing another amazing weekend with my third Castles appearance and first time on stage 20. Our total time was 24:37:58 which was easily our second best performance out of the four years we’ve competed and we finished 45th out of 66 teams.
Races
5K
This summer saw more 5K races than ever with the usual Aberavon, Paul Popham and SSAFA series joined by a new AspireX three race series on the Swansea Bay parkrun course as well as one off events such as Caerphilly 5K, Tri Hard on the Bay ‘Pizza Run’, Cardiff Summer Sizzler and more.
Over a 16 week period, I ran in 12 5K races which alongside a 5K training plan finally got me under 20 minutes for the first time in over 9 years and eventually a PB of 19:45 at Merthyr Mawr Lane which I’ll come back to on the BCRL section. Jo Jenkins and Laura Worrall completed 10 5K races over that period.
There’s a few too many to go through each one individually but some highlights included PB’s for John Burridge (17:35) and Angharad Croot (20:59) at the SSAFA races and a 29:39 PB for Alice Jenkins at the Paul Popham series. Despite very windy conditions we had a PB-fest at the August Aberavon fixture with PB’s for Rhys Hopkins (17:47), Rhydian Jones (20:54), Lisa Davies (22:51) and Macsen Davies (22:59) whilst on the same evening, Gareth Battle ran a PB of 18:36 at the Cardiff Summer Sizzler. Macsen then got another PB at the final race of the Aberavon series. It was another successful evening for many at the Tri Hard on the Bay 5K (or Pizza Run as most of us call it), where Rhys Hopkins ran yet another PB (17:43), Ben Batchelor ran 21:19 following up on several parkrun PB’s and it was double celebrations for the Batchelors with John running a PB of 23:53. I’ll come back to Merthyr Mawr Lane in the BCRL section which rounded off the summer 5K’s for most of us with another PB-fest.
Whilst not quite the 5K distance, we had a huge turnout of 8 teams of three at the Cosmeston Relays. 10 years ago we had 14 teams and I’m sure we’ll be aiming to hit those sort of numbers again next year after the success of this years event. Tom Daly, Nicky Bennett and Emyr Bissmire teamed up for our fastest team of the evening and finished 8th overall whilst Chloe Richards, Angharad Croot and Jade B were 8th out of the ladies teams.
10K
The biggest 10K of the summer saw 53 members running the Porthcawl 10K. Nicky Bennett was our first member across the line in under 35 minutes. There were PB’s for Emyr Bissmire, John Burridge, Dylan Panting, Rebecca Mason, Georgia Jones, Samantha Francis, Alice Jenkins and Debbie Plimmer. However, despite only 17 members running there, Magor 10K was the highest ratio of PB’s to runners with 7 achieving PB’s – Tom Daly, John Burridge (again), Chloe Richards, Angharad Croot, Rebecca Mason, John Bathelor and Martin Atkinson. Paul Teesdale was our first finisher at that event with a sub 35 finish.
Elsewhere we had 10 runners at the Maesteg Keeper of the Colliery 10K, 3 at the Mic Morris 10K, Denise Bradley at the Lightning Bolt 10K, Nicky Bennett finished 5th overall in the Battersea 10K whilst our North Wales representative Kevin Raymond completed the Caernafon 10K and Pwllhelli 10K with high age grade finishes in both.
More recently we had 28 runners at the CDF 10K where Tom Daly was our first runner back in 35:50 whilst Georgia Jones was our first female in a PB time of 47:07. Macsen followed up his Aberavon 5K PB just 4 days earlier with a PB of 49:13 whilst Lisa Davies continued her excellent form this year with a 49:27 PB. Martin Atkinson also rang the PB bell on the day with a 54:17 finish.
Swansea 10K which is about to start as I publish this will be included in the next edition of the blog whilst we still have the ever popular Richard Burton 10K to come this year as well as a new Newport 10K at the end of November.
Half Marathons
The only major Half Marathon of the summer has been Swansea Half Marathon with 17 runners at that one. Returning member Ryan Evans was our first member across the line with a PB of 1:23:47 and Scott Gray following closely behind with a PB of 1:24:13. It was an incredible day of PB’s with a further 9 coming from Rhydian Jones, Georgia Jones, Lisa Davies, Rhodri Davies, Evie Clemett, Olivia Corbett, Rachel Williams, Caryn Hicks and Ria Ross.
There were also multiple half marathon or slightly longer finishes at various South Wales Phoenix Events including the Supermarketathon which will probably rank as the most bizarre race of this year with runners doing laps of Bridgend Tesco’s superstore and the car park!
More recently father and son duo John and Keiron Burridge took on the Bridgewater Half Marathon where Kieron came away with a 1:27:01 PB.
Marathons (aka the Chris Pratt section)
Since the last blog update towards the end of May, Chris has notched up another 9 marathons to take his yearly total up to 18. This included temperatures well in excess of 30 degrees for some during this period. It also included the Tesco marathon run previously mentioned and the Rabbit Run. Although this will change with Marathon Eryri and Amsterdam coming up, at this point in time, Chris has done more marathons this year than the rest of the club put together!
Ultra-Marathons
Whilst Chris is dominating the marathon section, there has been lot more action from our members when it comes to ultras from debuts, to longest runs to a Grand Slam.
Carl Walsh has added a further four ultras to complete six Pegasus organised ultras ranging from 30-50 miles in just 6 months with each just one month apart. 210 miles in total. Up until this year, 140 runners have achieved this since they introduced it back in 2022.
Jonathan Matthews followed up his ultra marathon debut at the Vale 32 miler earlier in the year with the 40ish mile Rabbit Run.
Sharon Pritchard and Debbie Bennion ran their debut ultra marathon at the Race to the Kings 50K Coastal Edition back in June.
Jo Jenkins took on the Dragon 100 miler but unfortunately had a disrupted lead up with various niggles and injuries to the point we didn’t think she was going to even make the start line. Therefore it was a remarkable effort to end up completing 40 miles before calling it a day (or actually night). With temperatures soaring, the event had the highest number of non finishers since it began over 10 years ago.
I was back at Escape from Meriden for their first ever Summer Solstice edition where I managed 77.7 miles running from the centre of England (near Coventry) to Swindon. Rhiain Casseldine-Forman entered the bonkers event with the midnight start time to complete around 30 miles to run back north towards Market Harborough from the centre of England.
Leanne Parsons geared up for her 36 hour event with the 40 mile VOGUM. An illness in the week leading up to the event meant that like Jo, she almost didn’t make the start after months of dedicated training. Thankfully, things improved and Leanne managed 70 miles which is the longest distance covered in a single event of any of our current female members. Leanne then made it 3 ultra marathons within the space of 4 months with around 40 miles at the Salmon Run.
Other Races
It seems to have been a summer of trail races when it comes to the other distances. Fiona Drysdale took on Man vs Horse as part of a relay team and we had 8 runners at the Blade Runner for the June fixture of the trail championships. Whilst the ultra and marathon distances of the Rabbit Run races have already been mentioned, there were also 21 runners in the original 12K distance with Rhys Hopkins our first runner across the line. Kevin Raymond ran the Ras yr Wyddfa amongst other hilly trail events in North Wales. We had 4 runners at the Scenic Seven race and David Sheard ran the 25K Pembrokeshire Trail event.
More recently we had 10 runners at the Beast of Bryn with 3 taking on the 6 miler and 7 taking on the 10.5 miler with Lisa Davies picking up a South Wales Region medal in her age category. We had 4 runners at the Roman Run (16 miler) with Connor Panting our first runner back ahead of Angharad Croot, Jon Matthews and Denise Bradley.
BCRL
The final 5 of the 7 fixtures fall into the period covered in the blog and we start with Pencoed XC where extreme heat warning resulted in it being the first BCRL fixture to ever be postponed. A week later, 67 OPR completed the shorter than advertised fixture, finishing 3rd in the team standings for the evening.
Fixture 4 was at Kenfig Sands. I think I’ve done this one 8 times and quite safely say, this was the toughest year ever. We’d had hot, dry weather for weeks leading up to the race resulting in the sand being incredibly soft with what seemed like a lot less grass verges to try and avoid some of it. To add to that, it was a really hot evening to the point where had it been a couple of degrees more then they might have postponed that one as well. We only had 48 brave souls take on this one with Angharad Croot becoming the first OPR female member to collect a prize for finishing on the podium in several seasons after she finished third female.
Fixture 5 took us to our home event at the Planka with 63 runners as well as an army of volunteers. This was one of our strongest performances with 7 men in the top 15 overall including a second placed finish for Paul Teesdale, and 4 women in the top 11 female finishers. A huge thanks to our race director Chris Stanlake and the team of volunteers who put on a fantastic event.
Fixture 6 was a ‘sort of’ new course at Heol y Mynydd. It started and finished in different places to recent years but covered quite a bit of the previous course during the run and still included the steep hill. We had 54 finishers at this one with Paul Teesdale picking up another second place overall whilst Angharad just missed out on her second female podium with 4th.
The final fixture took us to Merthyr Mawr Lane for the officially measured 5K out and back course to Candlestone car park. We finally had some cooler temperatures after a long hot summer and some incredible performances amongst our 69 finishers on the night with 11 PB’s. They were Rhys Hopkins, Dom McCormack, Emyr Bissmire, Kieron Burridge, Gareth Battle, Gareth Jenkins, Angharad Croot, John Batchelor, Paul Harris, Martin Atkinson and Olivia Corbett.
Over the season we had 454 finishes from 124 different members meaning almost 70% of our current members ran in at least one event. Well done to our 12 members who ran in all 7 events – Caryn Hicks, Rya John, Ria Ross, Claire DB, Lee DB, Denise Bradley, Linda Harris, Angharad Croot, Rhodri Thomas, Gareth Jenkins, Nick Harris and Martin Atkinson
At the BCRL Awards Presentation there were age category prizes for Paul Teesdale, Rhys Hopkins, John Burridge, Emyr Bissmire, Angharad Croot and Chloe Richards for finishing in the top 3 in their respective age categories.
Captains Runners of the Month(s)
You may recall from the last blog that the captains group are now coming up with a list of runners to recognise for each blog. The first group included John Burridge, Martin Atkinson, Ashley Howells, Chloe Richards, Jade B and Lisa Davies who incredibly have all continued their amazing start to the year with several of them being mentioned above for representing us in Welsh Castles, BCRL’s and continuing to get PB’s.
For this ‘second third’ of the year, covering the end of May until the mid September, the four captains have chosen four men and four women to highlight for their achievements during this period. I should mention that although none of the captains can vote for themselves, this was a bit of an awkward one as several of us felt like one or more of the others should be in contention. Anyway – our six runners for this period are…
Ben Batchelor
Ben went into the summer with 5K PB of 22:54 which had stood for 2 years. He finished this summer with a 5K PB of 21:19 having lowered his previous mark at both Cosmeston parkrun and the Tri Hard Swansea Bay 5K. Ben was instrumental in the organisation and logistics for Welsh Castles. Ben has helped pace others during this period and regularly attends events to support other OPR members even if he’s not running the event himself.
Thomas Edison Daly
Tom has had a summer of PB’s with some astonishing parkrun times and lowering his PB from 17:35 to 17:21 to 17:15 to 16:52! Incredibly as that was at Cardiff parkrun, he was only 7th overall with that time! In the BCRL series, Tom was regularly one of our first finishers with a highest overall finish of 5th at the Planka. During the period this blog covers, he also lowered his 10K PB from Newport 10K earlier this year with a 35:33 at Magor 10K.
Gareth Jenkins
Weird to talk about myself in third person but Gareth started this period running 50-100 mile weeks in preparation for the Escape from Meriden Summer Solstice Ultra where he ran 77.7 miles in just over 24 hours from Meriden (near Coventry) to Swindon. Gareth represented the club at both Rack Raid and had the honour of running the final stage of Welsh Castles. Around this period, Gareth also became the first member in the clubs history to run 1,000 events for the club. Post ultra – attention turned to project 19:59 as his last sub 20 5K was coming up to 9 years ago. At the final SSAFA 5K of the season, Gareth ran 19:57 and has since followed that up with a 19:47 and an all time PB of 19:45 at Merthyr Mawr Lane 5K.
Paul Harris
Paul is another who has had a resurgence of form this summer. Coming into the summer with a 5K PB of 26:19, he has significantly lowered that with a 25:02 at Aberfields, a 24:43 at Merthyr Mawr Lane 5K and then another PB at Aberfields with a 24:24. Paul has also had brilliant performances throughout the BCRL season where his time at the Planka would again of been close to a PB for 5K. He recently ran with his daughter at the CDF 10K and on current form, I’m sure we’ll be seeing even more PB’s in the near future.
Angharad Croot
Angharad has had a busy summer representing the club at Rack Raid, Welsh Castles, every BCRL fixture and competing in the trail championships – where I believe she has an unassailable lead despite there being four fixtures to go! At the 5K distance, Angharad ran her first sub 21 time at the final SSAFA event (20:59) and followed this up with a PB of 20:57 at Merthyr Mawr Lane 5K. Angharad has also clocked a 10K PB with a 44:24 at Magor 10K. Angharad finished second in the BCRL senior female age category overall standings and was third female overall in the Kenfig fixture and fourth at HYM. Angharad has now switched her attention to training for Marathon Eryri next month with training runs so far including the Beast of Bryn, Roman Run and as I publish this, she will be running the Pumsaint Half Marathon.
Laura Worrall
Laura is another member who has had a very busy summer and is being highlighted due to her continuing dedication to representing the club and determination at events which led her to being a former Runners Runner winner for the club. Laura ran almost 20 races during the period this blog covers ranging from 5K up to Half Marathon. Laura represented the club in 6 out of the 7 BCRL events and continues to be one of the inspiring members of the club.
Olivia Corbett
Liv has been an incredible asset to our club since joining less than a year ago after going through last years Zero to Hero program. During the period this blog covers, Liv has achieved multiple PB’s at 5K and ran her first Half Marathon. Liv also represented the club at Rack Raid and BCRLs and has been involved in helping out with both Rack Raid and Welsh Castles organising. In our most recent Zero to Hero program, Liv attended more sessions than any other member to help out at both Monday and Thursday sessions.
Leanne Parsons
Leanne’s summer has been dominated by ultra running. Speaking from personal experience, you know things have got extreme when a 40 mile ultra – in Leanne’s case, the VOGUM – is just a ‘training run’ for your main event! Leanne’s main event was the Hope 36 hour ultra which started at 9pm on a Friday night meaning going straight into the night-time and having already been awake for 12+ hours for most runners. Leanne completed 14 laps of 5 miles to finish on 70 miles which is the furthest distance completed by any current female member of the club. It would be more than understandable if Leanne called it a day for ultra runs this year but just a day before posting this blog on 19/09/26 she completed another 40 miles at the Salmon Run ultra.
A huge well done to everyone who has run, volunteered or supported over this period.