Category: Running

parkruns

The first Saturday of the month saw 77 members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. Tourism included Alun Job at Jesmond Dene parkrun ahead of the Great North Run, and James Marsh at Medina on the Isle of Wight. One of our most prolific tourists, Melanie Thomas, celebrated her 250th parkrun at the University of Northampton with her ultra running buddy Rhiain. There was an OPR 1-2-3 at Maesteg with Paul Teesdale jogging round by his standards to be first finisher, followed by myself and Tom Mahoney. The first finisher token still eludes me after 530+ parkruns despite this now being my fourth time of picking up the 2nd placed token. We also had the first and third finishers overall at Aberfields with Luke Davis and Dylan Panting whilst Liz Davis was 3rd female. There were some super speedy performances at Aberbeeg where Gareth Richards was 2nd overall in 19:00, Jamie Verran was 3rd in 19:04 and Jason Griffiths ran a huge parkrun PB of 19:13 in 4th. Freya Allen also ran a parkrun PB of 21:22 just 4 days after her 5K PB at Merthyr Mawr Lane (more on that later) and Alison Allen ran 24:02 for her fastest parkrun time in over 7 years. John Burridge actually had the fastest time of the day with a 18:56 at Porthcawl to finish 8th out of 504 finishers.

The second Saturday of the month saw 70 OPR members either running or volunteering at a parkrun. We had 10 members at Amager Strandpark parkrun in Denmark ahead of the Copenhagen Half Marathon whilst Martin Beard chose Faelledparken. We had more international tourism with Gareth Davies at Marecchia parkrun in Italy. Closer to home, Angharad Croot was first female at Penallta parkrun and Rhodri Thomas was 3rd overall at Maesteg. A late Aberfields cancellation meant a big than usual turnout at Porthcawl whilst four members headed over Pontypridd for their parkrun fix.

Numbers increased to 80 OPR members either running or volunteering at a parkrun on the third Saturday of the month. Tourism including Dai Power at Morecambe Bay, Willow Hughes at Beeston and Andy and Liz Davis at Barnstaple. Paul Teesdale was first overall at Maesteg with Jonathan Matthews 3rd overall whilst Marina Konstantinova was first female just ahead of Jules Esmond in 2nd. John Burridge was 2nd overall at Aberfields behind former GB international runner James Thie who has visited Aberfields on a few occasions now. Angharad Croot picked up another female first finish, this time at Tremorfa where Connor Panting was 2nd overall. Plenty of milestone celebrations with Satera James running her 50th parkrun at Llyn Llech Owain whilst we had Liz Hattam (nee Sim) running her 50th parkrun at Porthcawl having been on 49 parkruns for quite a while. Debbie Bennion became the latest member to reach 250 parkruns and also celebrated her milestone at Porthcawl. Ashley Howells ran a parkrun PB at Sandy Water.

The final Saturday of the month saw 75 OPR members either running or volunteering at a parkrun. Tourism included Fiona Drysdale at Aviemore in Scotland whilst Bethan Moor was amongst over 1,000 finishers at Battersea parkrun. John Burridge was first finisher overall at Aberfields parkrun on their 99th event where they had flakes at the end. Jo Jenkins was 3rd female at the same event. Paul Harris ran a PB at Aberbeeg, We had a slightly lower turnout than usual at Porthcawl for their annual Elvis weekend where actors Ruth Jones and Steven Spiers were in attendance in a volunteering role. Niki Puleio was first finisher at Maesteg with Sarah Davies second female.

Races

The first Saturday of the month saw three members taking on the 16 mile Roman Run with Chris Pratt, Marina K and Jade B all completing the course.

We had 21 runners at the CDF 10K with Thomas Daly our first runner across the line in a PB of 36:55. Katie Plimmer knocked another 41 seconds off her PB having only that one a couple of weeks earlier with a 42:22.

On the same day as the CDF 10K we had the ‘Beat the Black Dog 12K’ event in Ogmore Valley. This was the September fixture for the club trial championships. Despite a detour early on up a very steep hill, I ended up finishing 4th overall and first non-cani-cross runner. Relatively new member Gareth Jones finished a few minutes behind in the top 10 overall with Sarah Davies our first female finisher amongst the 9 OPR members in attendance.

A week later we had 19 runners at the Swansea 10K where Emyr Bissmire ran a PB of 37:20 and Scott Gray a PB of 38:02 with John Burridge finishing in between them and just missing out on his best time. Marina K ran her first sub 50 for a PB of 49:49 whilst Lisa Davies followed up her Severn Bridge 10K PB just a few weeks previous with a 51:33. Leanne Parsons smashed her PB with a 55:33 whilst there was a second 10K PB of the year for Bev Sheard. New member Ellie Sheard also ran a PB whilst Alice Jenkins and Rosie Plimmer who also both PB’d at the Severn Bridge in August smashed their times again.

On the same day at Swansea 10K was the Llantwit Major 10K where we had 8 finishers. Jonathan Matthews was our first runner back with Fiona Drysdale our first lady.

We had 10 runners at the Copenhagen Half Marathon which is part of the ‘Super Halves’ series. Well done to Alexis and Paul Barrett, Kaye Pedler, Melanie Thomas, Shelley Evans, Sarah Davies, Dawn Hopkins, Martin Beard, Fiona Evans and Deb Edwards who all completed the race.

We had more international racing in month with Chris Pratt running 21:40 at the Vienna Night Run which must be one of the worlds biggest 5K’s as it had over 16,000 finishers!

Several members did the 11 mile Velindre Castle to Castle run which has been a popular event with our members over the years. A few members even ran the course in reverse beforehand to get some extra miles in for marathon training.

Danny Ridley and Carl Walsh ran the Berlin Marathon making it 5 marathons majors for both of them. Carl’s finish was particularly impressive given it was just 10 weeks post knee surgery. Boston will complete their ‘Six Star’ journey although there is now Sydney if they want to go for 7 and likely more joining in the next few years.

BCRL – Merthyr Mawr Lane 5K

The final fixture of the 2025 Bridgend County Running League saw 78 OPR members take on the Merthyr Mawr Lane 5K with several others volunteering at the event. James Griffiths finished 3rd overall whilst we had Paul Teesdale in 5th whilst there were PB’s for Thomas Daly and Emyr Bissmire. Our remaining top 10 men were with John Burridge, Connor Panting, Toby Kearns, Gareth Battle, Kieron Burridge and Jamie Verran.

It was another outstanding performance by our top 10 women with Katie Plimmer (PB), Willow Hughes, Freya Allen (PB), Bethan Moor, Angharad Croot, Sian Price and Gem Richards. Those 7 all finished in the top 20 women overall. Our top 10 was completed by Marina K, Sarah Davies and Lisa Davies.

In the team scoring we were 3rd on the night overall behind Bridgend and Porthcawl, however, we did hold on the 2nd place overall in the final standings. Another fantastic year with a record number of members running all 7 events as well as huge numbers for each fixture.

Zero to Hero

This month saw our Zero to Hero sessions start with myself, Sian Tossell-Lewis, Sian Jenkins and Sally Littlehales leading the sessions with help from several other club members. The first four weeks have seen over a dozen new faces turn up as they look to complete the couch to 5K program ending with the graduation at parkrun at the start of November.

parkruns

The first Saturday of the month saw 80 members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. We had 11 head to Newport for what is this months trail championship fixture in which late-comer to the party, Angharad Croot posting a 22:22 time for second female and only 10 seconds behind the first female overall. Further afield we had Darren Talbot at Malahide parkrun in Ireland and much further away than that, Matt and Deb Edwards ran at Weedon Island Preserve parkrun in Florida. Johnson’s Tours headed to Teifi Marshes parkrun with 8 OPR members in attendance. There was a good OPR turnout at Aberfields where tourist and multiple world-record holder in long distance challenges, Adam Holland, beat the course record with a 16:17. John and Kieron Burridge were second and third overall.

The second Saturday saw a massive 94 members either running or volunteering across 20 different parkrun venues. Amongst the huge amount of tourism included Johnson’s Tours at Milano Nord in Italy, Darija Keenor and Darren Talbot at Victoria parkrun in Glasgow, and Liz, Andy and Luke Davis at Havant parkrun near Portsmouth. We had 40 members at Porthcawl to celebrate Paul Teesdale and Samantha Morgan who were both running their 50th parkruns. Worth noting that Sam was completing this parkrun at 35 weeks pregnant and has done nearly half of her 50 parkruns during this pregnancy. Tom Daly was 3rd overall out of 593 runners and only 18 seconds off the first finisher. Sally Pensom was second female at Aberfields. Paul Barrett celebrated his 100th parkrun at Parc Coed Gwilym parkrun with 9 other members in attendance at what has been a very popular tourism destination in it’s first 10 events for our members.

The third Saturday saw another bumper turnout with 90 members either running or volunteering across 23 parkrun venues. Around 15 different venues used to be a high week but now we regularly see 20+. The Runs Podcast visit to Barry Island saw 8 of our members head there for a very warm parkrun on the coast. Alica Thomas was at Rheinpark parkrun in Germany whilst Johnson’s Tours headed to Teignmouth Promenade with 7 members in tow. We had a couple of first finishers with Kieron Burridge taking the position 1 token at Aberfields and Jamie Verran at Maesteg. Bethan Moor was second female at Tremorfa whilst Katie Plimmer was 3rd female at Newport. Darren Talbot ran his 50th parkrun at Jubilee parkrun in Bedford and in the process became our first member to run his first 50 parkruns at 50 different events. Thomas Daly also celebrated his 50th parkrun in style with a PB and first sub 18 clocking at Dulwich parkrun where he ran 17:56 which incredibly despite that time being fast enough to finish first at a lot of parkruns, he was 22nd overall.

Bank Holiday weekend saw 89 members either running or volunteering across an incredible 27 different parkrun venues. We had international tourism with Angharad Croot at Farfalle in Italy where she was first female finisher, Johnson’s tours headed to Fire Service College parkrun with 9 OPR members taking the trip. Closer to home, Keiron Burridge followed up his 20:01 from the week before with a 19:58 for third overall whilst the in-form Alice Jenkins clocked a PB time. At Tremorfa we had 2nd overall and 2nd female with Connor Panting and Bethan Moor respectively. Lee Dunbar-Bowen ran a PB at Llanishen Park with a 23:48 whilst Marina was at another Cardiff event getting 3rd female at Trelai parkrun. At Maesteg we had Niki Puleio first across the line with Emyr Bissmire in 3rd overall.

The fifth and final parkrunday of the month saw 78 members either running or volunteering. Karl headed to Father Collins parkrun in Ireland whilst there was plenty of other tourism on the day. A big turnout of OPR members at Porthcawl where Toby Kearns was 6th overall out of 627 runners which is amongst the top 5 highest attendances at Porthcawl in their 12 and a half years.

Races

5K

The summer 5K series continued with the second in the Aberavon 5K series. Connor Panting was our first member across the line with a PB of 18:26 taking advantage of the unusually calm conditions. Our first female across the line was Katie Plimmer with 20:40 for her second fastest 5K time whilst it was a huge PB for Freya Allen with a 21:02. Rosie Plimmer knocked over 2 minutes off her PB on a great night for our 19 runners in attendance.

A week later, and a day after the Heol y Mynydd BCRL fixture, 16 members took on the Tri Hard on the Bay 5K. I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn by saying the pizza and beer at the end was a big draw for most of us! Another relatively calm night on the coast led to more amazing PB’s with Connor smashing his time from the previous week with a 18:01. Jo Jenkins continued her brilliant form this year with her second 5K PB of the year, knocking another 20 seconds off with a 23:36 with her running at least 5K day every day streak now well into the 200+ days. Lisa Davies also continues to see steady improvement with a PB of 24:18 whilst Deb Edwards also bagged herself a new PB.

We also had members taking on their first ever 5K (or rather 5,000m) track race in month with the Tonypandy Track Classic. Myself, John Burridge and Scott Gray were in the ‘D’ race of the graded races. Scott ran a PB whilst John wasn’t far off his best 5K time. I ran 20:08 for my best time in over 8 years. There was also The Runs podcast Community Event which Niki Puleio and Rhodri Davies took part in which raised money towards Diabetes UK.

On the final weekend of the month, Chris Pratt ran the Home Nations Podium event in Cardiff which see’s some of Britain’s top athletes competing on a fast 3 lap course around Bute Park. Chris ran his fastest time of the year with a 22:15.

10K

Last month I missed including Magor 10K where we had 3 runners. In form Niki Puleio smashed his 10K PB with a 34:34 which is also an club age category record for 45 years plus. John Burridge ran just outside his PB with a 37:51 whilst Keiron Burridge ran 40:50.

A very rare midweek 10K saw 6 members take on the Severn Bridge 10K. Normally this event is run the same time as the Severn Bridge Half Marathon but with that event seemingly on a long hiatus, Rogue Runs decided to include it within their series of events. Despite a bumpy course we came away with 4 PB’s with the two of us who didn’t PB (Jo and I) having a decent excuse having run an ultra just 48 hours earlier. Katie Plimmer ran 43:04 whilst I helped pace Lisa Davies to 53:01 – although I have no doubt she could have easily done it without me. Alice Jenkins and Rosie Plimmer ended up crossing the line together in 1:09:33 and 1:09:34 respectively. All four knocking at least a minute of their previous bests.

Other Races

Three members took on the 10.5 mile Beast of Bryn with Jonathan Matthews leading the OPR members across the line followed by Paul Harris and Mark Worrall. We also had three members in the 6 mile option with Debbie Bennion, Sharon Pritchard and Laura Worrall completing the challenging course.

Jo and I took on the Loopathon which is a charity event put on by Albany Road Running Club with entrants taking on 5K loops around Roath Park playing fields and the lake – basically miles 9-12 of the Cardiff Half route. I’ve done this event in each of the four years whilst this was Jo’s second appearance having both done it last year. In temperatures reaching 28 degrees, I completed 11 laps for a total of 55K in around 6 and a half hours whilst Jo completed 10 laps for 50K in 6 hours 12 minutes. I did the second most laps of anyone there whilst Jo was joint 3rd and joint 1st lady for most laps. This came just 5 weeks after Jo achieved her longest distance ever by completing the 50 mile Dragon Ultra and is her 3rd ultra in 4 months (with a marathon in that period as well!).

From the longest event of the month to the shortest as Chris Pratt and I took on a track race for the first time (this was a week before the Tonypandy Track Classic). Chris had received an e-mail about a mile track race on the Aberdare track that they were encouraging those that had never run track before to give it a go. We were both a bit nervous given the only others who signed up were 4 Bridgend AC runners plus two very fast younger runners with track experience. It was a great experience though and we even ended up joining in on the 4 x 100m relay event at the end.

We had 4 runners at the latest South Wales Phoenix Running offering – the Bumblebee Run. Jayne Bissmire ran 2 laps to clock 6.6 miles, Alice Jenkins and Debbie Bennion did 3 laps to clock 9.9 miles whilst Sharon Pritchard did 5 laps for a total of 16.5 miles.

Fiona Drysdale took on the Machen Mountain race which is 7k in distance but with over 1,000 feet of elevation packed into 4 and a bit miles.

BCRL

This month saw 79 members head to Heol y Mynydd for the challenging trail course. James Griffiths was our first runner across the line with Paul Teesdale not to far behind him. Our top 10 men were completed by Emyr Bissmire (who is still on a run every day streak for 2025), John Burridge, Toby Kearns, Gareth Battle, Gareth Richards, Matt Edwards, Rhodri Thomas and Keiron Burridge. I seem to be saying this every fixture but our ladies produced possibly their best ever BCRL performance with Bethan Moor, Willow Hughes, Katie Plimmer, Freya Allen and Angharad Croot finishing 4th to 8th in the female rankings and just 58 seconds separating the 5 of them. Our top 10 was then completed by strong performances by Sian Price, Gem Richards, Marina Konstantinova, Lisa Davies and Alison Allen. There were great performances throughout the field with almost all of our runners beating their time on the same course from the previous year. That was good enough to get us second place on the night in the team / club standings to put us in a very strong position to finish runners up this year.

Aside from the running there was another very successful social event with the summer BBQ which included plenty of food, a raffle in which toilet rolls are apparently now the prize everyone wants to get, a quiz and karaoke. We also saw a couple of plod and a pint Fridays.

19th August 2023 – it finally happened – a parkrun in the valley the club was formed. Not only that, a parkrun that starts and finishes where the club did it’s first ever training session almost to the day 11 years earlier. It’s also where our first Couch to 5K sessions took place which included a couple of graduates who are still members to this day.

Before getting onto the OPR specific stats, I’ll start with a general overview. The second year of Aberfields parkrun started with a new course record of 16:26 which beat Jake Taskers time from event 1 by just 2 seconds. That new time stood until just a couple of weeks ago when Adam ‘Tango’ Holland set a new course best of 16:17. The female course record of 20:05 was set just 5 weeks after Aberfields started and has remained ever since. Just a few weeks ago Aberfields did have their first ever female first finisher overall with Alesha Santos running 20:16.

There have been 12 cancellations in the first 2 years resulting in 93 events so far. This year also saw Aberfields host a New Years Day event as well. In those 47 events, 182 different runners with OPR as their club have run 1,587 times at Aberfields. With there being 5,527 finishes at Aberfields in total, that means we’ve made up over a quarter of all finishers.

Most runs at Aberfields parkrun

1. Aled Hughes 68 (joint second most after non-member Steve John with 70)
2. Gareth Jenkins 67 (4th overall highest)
3. Jo Jenkins 49 (7th overall and 2nd highest female runner after non-member Lynne Cabble with 52))
4. Chris Stanlake 36 (10th overall)
5. Jonathan Matthews 35
6. Sally Pensom 33
7. Laura Worrall 30
8. Gareth Davies 26
9. Nick Harris 25 / Dai Kembery 25 / Mark Worrall 25

It’s probably not that surprising that Aled is high on the list given I think he may hold the title for OPR member living closest to a parkrun with the start just 0.5 miles from his front door and the course passing within 500 feet of it. For myself and Jo, it’s become our home parkrun having both been regulars at Porthcawl before Aberfields started. Whilst Chris Stanlake has run 36 times, he’s actually been at more Aberfields than all of us with his volunteering added.

Fastest times at Aberfields (Men – current members)

1. Paul Teesdale 18:15
2. Aled Hughes 18:53
3. Nicky Bennett 19:00
4. John Burridge 19:06
5. Jamie Verran 19:06
6. Daniel Richards 19:08
7. Kieron Burridge 19:38
8. Jonathan Matthews 19:40
9. Rhodri Thomas 19:46
10. Connor Panting 19:49

Former member Jake Tasker has a 16:28, 16:37 and 16:38 at Aberfields which are the 3rd, 4th and 5th fastest ever times. Second claim member James Griffiths has run 17:43. Former member Angelo ‘Nico’ Doria has run 18:02 at Aberfields.

Fastest times at Aberfields (Women – current members)

1. Angharad Croot 23:27
2. Claire Dunbar-Bowen 23:39
3. Freya Allen 23:53 – F18-19 Age Category Record
4. Sarah Davies 23:59
5. Marina Konstantinova 24:34
6. Willow Hughes 24:57
7. Katie Plimmer 25:15
8. Fiona Drysdale 25:23
9. Alison Allen 25:27
10. Arwen Rees 26:19

First finishers at Aberfields

1. Aled Hughes 8 (most overall including non-club members)
2. John Burridge 4
3. Jonathan Matthew 3
4. Paul Teesdale 2
5. Jamie Verran 2
6. Dylan Panting / Luke Davis / Rhodri Thomas 1

Unlike other parkruns, Aberfields don’t really have a regular first finisher with 60 different runners picking up the number one token so far. Second claim member James Griffiths has also been first finisher on 3 occasions whilst former member Jake Tasker has also picked up the number 1 token on 3 occasions.

First female finishes at Aberfields

1. Angharad Croot 3 (joint second overall with the most being 5)
2. Sarah Davies 3 (joint second overall with the most being 5)
3. Alison Allen 2
4. Jo Jenkins / Deborah Edwards / Arwen Rees / Freya Allen / Willow Hughes / Fiona Drysdale 1

There have been 76 different first female finishers in total so it’s more or less someone new every week.

Volunteering at Aberfields

1. Jay Howells 100
2. Chris Stanlake 93
3. Gareth Jenkins 66
4. Toni Howells 58
5. Judith Howells 43
6. Rhiannon Whiteley 40
7. Catherine Robinson 35
8. Julie Ransom 31
9. Shawn Cullen 29
10. Liz Davis 26
11. Liam O’Sullivan 23
12. Gareth Davies 16
13. Claudine Nicholson-Lewis 15
14. Aled Hughes 15
15. John Burridge 10

Aberfields has had a huge effect on how regular many of our members volunteer. The 15 listed above total exactly 600 volunteer credits between them, but there’s also a further 20+ current members who’ve volunteered at least once in the first year as well.

If you’re wondering how Jay could be on 100 volunteer credits when there’s only been 93 events – parkrun now allow volunteer credits for parkruns that are cancelled at short notice. In Jays case, he may have done volunteer coordinating that week so had already fulfilled his role before the event then being cancelled due to weather or other reasons. Everyone also received a volunteer credit a few weeks ago when they turned up to cut back the bushes that had encroached on the course leading to a cancellation.

Chris Stanlake is one of the Run Directors and has volunteered in multiple roles including getting a few run counts in as tail walker or park walker. Toni has notched up 58 volunteer credits in various roles. My 66 are all from roles that have meant volunteering and running – First Timers Welcome (5), Pre Event Course Check (1) and Pacing (60). Judith makes it three of the Howells family in the top 5 and is often on barcode scanning or marshalling. Liz Davis and Claudine Nicholson-Lewis were regular Run Directors in the first year and in the second year of the event, Liam O’Sullivan has joined the Run Director rotation.

Milestones at Aberfields

We’ve also seen multiple members celebrate parkrun milestones at Aberfields including Nick Harris becoming the first member of the club (and first at Aberfields) to celebrate 500 parkruns in Dec 2024 before I followed in February 2025. As part of a charity challenge, I turned up to Aberfields in fancy dress in the lead up to my 500th including a Giant Inflatable Eagle costume, a Welsh Wrestler, a cheerleader and various others. Aberfields was also used for our last Zero to Hero graduation where we had a full pacer team and several of the graduates have gone on to become regulars at training and races with us.

If you haven’t been to Aberfields parkrun yet, then go along sometime soon. It’s one of the most friendliest, welcoming parkruns around and you’ll be sure to see a Phoenix or two running and on the volunteer team.

parkruns

The month kicked off with a slightly lower than average 58 members either running or volunteering at parkruns. Not too surprising given the wet and windy conditions coupled with Aberfields being cancelled and those resting up for Porthcawl 10K the next day. The volunteer team at Aberfields deserve a shout out who still headed to the course on Saturday morning in order to help cut back the bushes that had infringed on the course to ensure it would go on in future weeks. We had international tourism with Jakub Griz at Lubin parkrun in Poland where he finished 6 out of just 22 runners. Looking at their page, even though they’ve been going for just over 10 years, 20 odd runners is standard at that parkrun. Jo and I attended Blaise Castle as part of this months trial championship for their 99th event where they were handing out flakes at the end. Our biggest attended parkrun was Porthcawl where Angharad Croot was celebrating her 50th parkrun. Again, weather conditions and Porthcawl 10K the next morning meant that most took it relatively easy but we did have a second place overall with a speedy 19:12 from Jamie Verran who revisited Parc Coed Gwilym as part of his quest to tick on certain event numbers for the Fibonacci Sequence challenge.

What a difference a week makes – from wet and windy conditions the previous week, to a heatwave and 25 degree plus temperatures at 9am! 86 members either ran or volunteered across 19 different parkrun venues. At Aberfields parkrun they have a Wimbledon tennis theme and we also had our first ever female to finish first overall. If anyone is familiar with the YouTube channel ‘Alesha and the Bullet’, it was Alesha who claimed first place overall and I recommend checking out a previous video they did when they visited Aberfields in January 2024. Katie Plimmer, Angharad Croot, Ben Batchelor, Rosie Plimmer and Natasha Pask visited Blaise Castle this week in what was their 100th event – Katie was 3rd female overall in a time that interestingly would have been first female the week before by a couple of minutes. At Porthcawl, Angelo ‘Nico’ Doria celebrated renewing his membership with the club after returning from university with a stunning 16:22 first place finish with 31 OPR members in attendance. Nine OPR members headed off to Aberystwyth on the latest Johnsons Tours trip with Jamie Verran clocking a new parkrun PB of 18:33 to finish first overall – his 10th different venue where he’s finished first overall which is a club record.

The third Saturday of the month saw 88 members ether running or volunteering at a parkrun. Tourism-wise, Fiona Drysdale visited Aviemore parkrun in Scotland, the Batchelor brothers were at Newbury plus plenty of other closer parkruns visited. There were big turnouts at both Maesteg for the 8th anniversary of that parkrun and also a great turnout at Porthcawl where Sharon Pritchard became our latest member to join the 250 run club. By far our fastest parkrunner of the day was Angelo ‘Nico’ Doria with 17:01 at Maesteg parkrun – only 7 other runners have run a faster time in the 8 years of Maesteg parkrun and it also makes Nico our fastest current club member at that venue. It was a particularly speedy day at Maesteg with the top 17 runners all coming in under 22 minutes which is a time that on some weeks would be good enough for top 3. Freya Allen was first female at the Maesteg. Bethan Moor was 2nd female overall at Colby. Well done to Andrew Davis who’s fine form continued with a 23:18 at Porthcawl. There was also a PB for Clare Worthington who has improved her parkrun time from 29:31 to 26:13 this year.

The final Saturday of the month saw a massive 95 members either running of volunteering at a parkrun. 47 of those were at Porthcawl where Chris Pratt became the third member of the club to reach the 500 parkrun club. Thomas Daly was our first member to cross the line with a 18:17 whilst Gareth Richards ran 19:57 just 6 days after the Dragon 100 which I’ll come onto a bit later. Lots of international tourism – Matt and Deb Edwards at Clermont Waterfront parkrun (Florida). Dawn Hopkins hoped on a flight with Johnson’s Tours to run at Father Collins parkrun in Ireland. Claire and Lee Dunbar-Bowen ran at Toyen parkrun in Norway where Lee ran his 100th parkrun and his 50th different venue on his 50th birthday – that’s some impressive lining up of milestones. We also had a 25 parkrun milestone run with Dan Richards at Aberfields.

Races

5K

The summer 5K’s continued with the first of the Aberavon / Run4All events where Lee Dunbar-Bowen ran a 23:34 PB with 12 other OPR members also running that event. A week later it was the final race of the Paul Popham / Swansea Bay series with a PB of 20:29 for Katie Plimmer who was our first member across the line and was also good enough to pick up the prize for 2nd senior female. Katie’s sister Rosie also ran a PB with a 35:30 on a very hot and humid evening on the coast. OPR also got awarded our prize for having the most attendances… in 2024. Last year they forgot the trophy so we received one a year later. We had 13 in attendance for that final event.

There were some exceptionally fast times at the final SSAFA 5K of 2025 series. Angelo ‘Nico’ Doria ran a PB of 15:44 whilst Dan Richards set a new over 40’s club record with a 16:19. There was also a huge PB for Paul Teesdale with a 16:20. Willow Hughes, Toby Kearns and Angharad Croot all came in between 21:02-21:13 with new member Lewis King a minute further back in 22:34. Finally, we had Denise Bradley who’s time of 25:00 won her the South Wales 5K Championship Gold Medal for her age category whilst Nico also won in the U21 category.

10K and Half Marathons

OPR were out in numbers at the Porthcawl 10K with 65 runners plus a number of members volunteering at the event. Paul Teesdale was our first runner across the line whilst Niki Puleio continued his impressive form with a 35:22 PB. There were PB’s throughout the field with the list including Connor Panting, Scott Gray, Freya Allen, Jeff Cadogan, Jules Esmond, John Batchelor, Lewis King, Deb Edwards, Lisa Davies, Clare Worthington, Morgan Plimmer, Rhodri Davies, Bev Sheard, Caryn Hicks and Rosie Plimmer. A special mention for Thomas Daly who turned up late and had to start several pens back but still finished in 39:13 having had to overtake thousands of runners. There was just one other 10K in the month with 7 members taking on the Mic Morris 10K.

Only one Half Marathon in July with Jason Griffiths and Jules Esmond taking on the testing course at the Long Course weekend in Tenby.

Other Races

On the same evening as the final Paul Popham 5K event, we also had 12 runners at Cosmeston Relays. Our fastest team on the night was made up of Toby Kearns, Paul Teesdale and Jonathan Matthews. Amongst the four teams, we also had a speedy all female team with Freya, Angharad and Willow who have a combined age younger a couple of our more experienced members! However, this event isn’t just for the young speedsters. Way back in 2016, we actually had 15 teams with those completing the 2.9 mile course from 16 minutes to 45 minutes. Definitely one to look out for next year and hopefully have a big OPR turnout.

18 members took on the Rabbit Run 12K with Matt Edwards our first member across the line in that distance and Marina Konstantinova our first female across the line. This year also saw the introduction of a 40K option which 6 members took on. The challenging course included all of the 12K option with a rather large detour out on the coastal path before turning inland where we were presented with about 20 styles within a couple of miles! The route included almost 2,000 feet of elevation. In very warm and humid conditions, Katie Plimmer managed to complete the 25 mile course in an impressive 4:06:29 and was 2nd female overall. I finished in 4:33 with Jonathan Matthews finishing just a minute later. Beverley Soles completed the course in 5:34 whilst Chris Pratt and Nick Harris both said they found it a tough day at the office but battled on to complete the course 5:51 and 6:15 respectively. The Rabbit Run events were followed by the annual Bridgend Beer Mile which always makes for an entertaining watch. We had 11 runners out of the 49 in total with Paul Teesdale now the unofficial World Beer Mile Trail Champion – as the organisers believe they may be the only trail Beer Mile event in the world. Niki Puleio came a close second in his heat whilst they teamed up along with Toby Kearns and Jonathan Matthews to win the relay event. Kudos to Nick Harris and Jonathan Matthews who did the Beer Mile after completing the 40K Rabbit Run as well!

Ultra Marathons

Simon Melksham and Leanne Parsons took on the Ham and Lyme 50K in Devon at the start of the month, finishing in 8 hours and 23 minutes. Leanne, our 2024 Female Ultra Runner of the Year has certainly lived up to that title and has already clocked up a marathon and 2 ultras this year.

Another couple of regulars on the ultra-scene, Melanie Thomas and Rhiain Casseldine-Forman completed the Race to the King 50K. After being under doctors orders not to run, Mel was accompanied by Rhiain for a 10+ hour power-walk which is pretty impressive. Our 2023 Female Ultra Runner of the Year, Mel has made a comeback to ultras this year having had a break from them in 2024 with this being her 3^rd ultra between 30-40 miles within the space of 13 weeks.

At the Dragon Ultra Marathon races we had yet another of our Ultra Marathon award winners with 2023 Male Ultra Runner of the Year, Gareth Richards taking on the 100 mile event. Looking to avenge a DNF last year and finish what would be an incredible 5^th 100 miler, Gareth battled through the course despite an ongoing niggle to finish in 26 hours and 39 minutes. In the 50 mile event we had Jo Jenkins taking on her longest ever distance to date having done 34 miles at the Big Moose Ultra back in April, and Dylan Panting who was almost doubling his longest ever distance of a marathon. Both did incredibly well on the day with Dylan finishing in 11 hours 54 minutes and Jo finishing in 13 hours and 41 minutes. We actually had runners in all three distances with Chris Wintle in the 30 miler. He completed his first ultra with the club in 7 hours and 52 minutes.

BCRL – Kenfig Sands and the ‘World Famous Planka’

We had 72 runners at Fixture 4 of the Bridgend County Running League at Kenfig Sands. In his final BCRL for the club, Nico was first overall in 18:57 with Paul Teesdale and Niki Puleio also in the top 10 with 6^th and 10^th respectively. Katie Plimmer was 4^th overall in the ladies. Great performances by our top 10 male and female finishers coupled with a great turnout meant that we finished second in the club standings on the night which moved us right alongside Porthcawl for second in the overall standings. Nico, Niki, Gareth Battle and Freya Allen were all first in their age categories for this fixture as well.

The fifth fixture of this years BCRL was our turn to host with the Planka being our venue. We had 77 runners for this one but well over 100 members in attendance with huge thanks to those that organised the event and volunteered. A special mention for long-standing member Chris Stanlake who was the race director for the first time with everything running smoothly on the night. James Griffiths was our first runner across the line and second overall. We also had a further 8 in the top 20 with Daniel Richards, Paul Teesdale, Niki Puleio, Thomas Daly, Toby Kearns, Connor Panting, Emyr Bissmire and John Burridge. Our 10^th finisher was Gareth Richards who ran sub 20 on a cross country style course less than 2 weeks after his second 100 miler in the last 3 months. It was the first time this year that our top 10 men out-scored Bridgend. Our female top 10 were equally as impressive with arguably our strongest performance in any BCRL fixture. Katie Plimmer, Willow Hughes, Bethan Moor, Freya Allen and Angharad Croot all came in between 21:24 and 22:23 to finish between 7^th and 13^th overall out of the ladies. We then had Gem Richards, Jules Esmond, Alison Allen, Lisa Davies and Fiona Drysdale making up our top 10 with great performances all round. Again, with the great turnout, we finished second overall on the night and opened up a significant gap to Porthcawl in third.

Since the inaugural in July 2017, we’ve had 268 runners registered under OPR that have completed 3,702 runs at Maesteg parkrun (that’s 14,808 times up that hill). Despite some weeks with no members at Maesteg over the past year, our club still makes up around 20% of all finishes at Maesteg in their 320 events to date. Just to note that these figures do include some juniors and some former members.

Most parkruns at Maesteg

1. Niki Puleio 145
2. Tom Mahoney 134
3. Aled Hughes 119
4. Nicky Bennett 114
5. Dai Kembery 111
6. Kris Denholm 104
7. Emyr Bissmire 102
8. Toby Kearns 94
9. Carys Bissmire 80
10. Arwen Rees 75

Dai and Emyr have both joined the Maesteg 100 club in the past year whilst Arwen is the only new addition from last years top 10 and is one in front of Denise Bradley who is our next most regular parkrunner at Maesteg. Other current members that have run at Maesteg on over 50 occasions are Alison Allen and Keith Coleman.

Highest percentage of total parkruns at Maesteg (for those with over 50 runs there) 

1. Carys Bissmire (80/85) 94.1%
2. Emyr Bissmire (102/110) 92.7%
3. Nicky Bennett (114/139) 82.0%
4. Tom Mahoney (134/179) 74.8%
5. Arwen Rees (75/102) 73.5%

The major changes from last years list are Arwen and Tom who at one point had over 90% of their parkruns at Maesteg.

Maesteg first finishers

1. Nicky Bennett 18
2. Niki Puleio 18
3. Toby Kearns 6
4. Josh Parry 6
5. Aled Jenkins 6
6. Paul Teesdale 5
7. Angelo Nico Doria 4
8. Gareth Richards 2
9. Steve Holloway / Kris Denholm / James Littlewood / Gareth Battle / Tom Mahoney / Aled Hughes / Jamie Verran / Wayne Hayhurst / Daniel Richards / Thomas Daly / Rhodri Thomas and Harvey Puleio have all finished first overall on one occasion

 We also had Jacob Tasker (a record 37 times) Neil Jones and Adrian Pearce as first finishers when they were members of the club meaning there’s been around 125 occasions that there’s been an OPR member first across the line at Maesteg.

Female first finishers

1. Carys Bissmire 13
2. Claire Dunbar-Bowen 5
3. Bethan Moor 5
4. Angharad Croot 3
5. Willow Hughes 3
6. Alison Allen 3
7. Sarah Davies 2
8. Sarah Wilkes 2
9. Marina Konstantinova 2
10. Sian Price / Katie Plimmer / Freya Allen / Hattie James / Arwen Rees 1

This list has increased by 5 since last year and the ladies have dominated at Maesteg parkrun with 19 first female finishers being OPR members in the past year.

 Fastest Maesteg PB’s (Male)

1. Jacob Tasker 16:12
2. Aled Jenkins 17:32 (before joining club)
3. Angelo Nico Doria 17:38
4. Nicky Bennett 17:53
5. Paul Teesdale 17:57
6. Josh Parry 18:27
7. Niki Puleio 18:30
8. Daniel Richards 18:44
9. Gareth Richards 18:57
10. Jamie Verran 19:01

Fastest Maesteg PB’s (Female) 

1. Sarah Wilkes 21:23
2. Bethan Moor 21:47
3. Katie Plimmer 21:50
4. Angharad Croot 22:19
5. Mia Allen 22:39 (before joining club)
6. Claire Dunbar-Bowen 23:04
7. Freya Allen 23:08
8. Carys Bissmire 23:36
9. Willow Hughes 23:52
10. Hattie James 23:54

Biggest OPR attendances at Maesteg 

1. 11^th September 2021 – 45 (Dai Kembery’s 250th parkrun)
2. 24^th December 2022 – 43 (multiple club milestones / Christmas theme)
3. 3^rd August 2019 – 41 (this was the morning before a Beer Mile and everyone was dressed up)

Volunteering at Maesteg parkrun

1. Sian Jenkins 81
2. Tom Mahoney 69
3. Kris Denholm 46
4. David Kembery 42
5. Nicky Bennett 38

Former members Emma Marshall and Stephne Puddy are two of the most regular volunteers at Maesteg with 300 and 278 volunteer credits respectively. Over the years there’s been several OPR takeovers where 20+ volunteer roles have been filled by our members.

Happy 8th anniversary to Maesteg parkrun!

parkruns

The first Saturday in June saw 70 OPR members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. We had some international tourism with Nick, Saul and Linda Harris at Zegerplas parkrun. Nick completed his parkrun alphabet in the process. Dawn Wright and Kate Atkin were at the newest additional to parkrun in Wales at Parc Coed Gwilym. No first finishers this week although Kieron Burridge was second overall at Aberfields and Sarah Davies was 2nd female at the ‘toughest parkrun in Wales’ at Coed Cefn Pwll Du. Leanne Parsons ran a PB at Hove Promenade parkrun in Brighton whilst closer to home, Andrew Davis ran a PB at Porthcawl.

This month saw a chance to get in an extra parkrun if you fancied a trip to the Netherlands which 9 of our members did as part of Johnsons Tours visiting Zuiderpark. Kaye and Melinda completed their second parkrun alphabet in the process.

The second Saturday of the month saw 76 OPR members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. Mostly local tourism this week with only 4 members doing parkrun outside of Wales. Six members headed down to the new parkrun mentioned in the previous week whilst there were big attendances at Maesteg and Porthcawl. We had both the male and female first finishers at Maesteg with Paul Teesdale finishing first overall and Angharad Croot first female.

The third weekend saw a bumper 94 OPR members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. Lots of top 5 finishes with Aled Hughes, Jonathan Matthews and Keiron Burridge 3rd to 5th overall at Aberfields whilst Willow Hughes and Angharad Croot were first and second female at the same event. Katie Plimmer was first female and fourth overall at Coed Cefn Pwll Du with myself 5th overall. Niki Puleio was first overall at Maesteg whilst Bethan Moor was first female and fourth overall. Jamie Verran was second at Parc Coed Gwilym, Thomas Daly was 5th at Porthcawl and Claire Dunbar Bowen was first female at Rogiet. I’m not sure we’ve ever had three first female finishers on one Saturday let alone four. There was a good turnout at Aberfields for Laura Worrall’s 100th parkrun whilst Claire Goldsworthy celebrated her 300th parkrun in Porthcawl.

The final Saturday saw 92 OPR members either run or volunteer at a parkrun. It was another weekend of high finishing positions with Keiron Burridge, Aled Hughes and myself in 2nd, 4th and 5th at Aberfields, Jamie Verran 5th overall at Barry Island, Angharad Croot was first female at Coed Cefn Pwll Du, and Niki Puleio was first overall at Maesteg. Maesteg parkrun saw a higher than usual OPR contingent with Arwen Rees running her 100th parkrun having had to delay it by several weeks due to injury. Tourism-wise we had members at 21 different parkruns including Karen Norman at Illaunmanagh in Ireland and Gary Loo at Prisint 18 parkrun in Malaysia.

Races

The summer 5K’s continued with the second SSAFA 5k of the series where Toby Kearns ‘warmed up’ for his Welsh Castles stage which was a few days later with a 18:41. I ran 20:10 which was my fastest 5K in almost 8 years! Next up was the second of the Swansea Bay (Paul Popham) 5K series where we had 12 runners. Paul Teesdale ran 16:50 to finish 7th overall. Willow Hughes ran 20:40 and ended up with a prize for being second senior lady. I ran 21:00 in what felt like a race-to-far after Rack Raid, SSAFA and Welsh Castles all in the previous 10 days. Sporting the number 1 race bib, another of our in-form ladies, Freya Allen ran 22:30 whilst there were great performances throughout the field.

We had 25 runners at the Barry 10K which returned after a one year absence. Luke Davis was our first finisher in PB of 44:32 followed by Katie Plimmer in 46:20 and Hattie James in 48:32. Alice Jenkins also ran a PB with a 1:10:55 which is a fantastic achievement on what is an undulating course. We also had more than a dozen members taking on the Keeper of the Colliery 10K in Maesteg at the end of the month.

Onto the longer distances and Jade Bazylkiewicz took on the Skyrun Eryri 16K which is is amongst one of the toughest trail races in Wales / UK and finished in just under 3 hours. Unfortunately, whilst we had one member conquering an amazing comeback from injury, caoch Kev Raymond ended up on the injury bench after a fall and suspect broken wrist in one of the longer distances at the same event.

On the same Sunday as Welsh Castles, we had our biggest turnout at a Half Marathon so far this year with 19 members taking on Swansea Half. Emyr Bissmire (on 150+ day running streak at the time of running it) smashed his PB with a 1:25:12. New member Josh Campbell ran an outstanding 1:33:00 whilst the ever improving Katie Plimmer ran a 1:36:48 PB. There were also PB’s for Hattie James (1:40), Chris Whittle (1:48), Marina Konstantinova (1:50), Lee Dunbar-Bowen (1:56) and Deb Edwards (1:59).

We had just the one runner at the latest South Wales Phoenix event ‘Tigers, Lions and Bears’ at Barry Sidlings in Pontypridd. Jo Jenkins headed there (after doing Pontypridd parkrun first of course) with the intention of doing 5 or 6 laps for 16.5 to 19.8 miles but ended up doing 8 to clock up a marathon distance.

Further afield we had Carl Walsh and Danny Ridley doing a marathon in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil! Carl described it in his Facebook post as very humid but with an amazing atmosphere.

We also had a few Ultra Marathons in the month. Doctors orders meant that Melanie Thomas power walked the entire Race to the Kings 50k with fellow OPR member and ultra-buddy Rhiain Casseldine-Foreman. Danny Ridley took on the VOGUM 40 miler from Porthcawl along the coastal path to Cardiff. Gareth Richards was back at the Pembrokeshire 100 miler having finished it the previous year despite an ankle issue from very early on. Despite some niggles again from early on this time round again, Gareth completed the 100 mile course with a staggering 18,000+ feet of elevation in challenging weather on the Welsh Coastal Path in 32 hours and 35 minutes.

BCRL

The third fixture of this seasons BCRL took us to Pencoed for their 5K cross country style course. Despite drizzly conditions, it was still very warm for the run before some of us getting quite cold afterwards. 84 OPR members were in attendance. Paul Teesdale finished 7th overall with Thomas Daly, Toby Kearns, Jamie Verran, Matt Edwards, Gareth Battle, Connor Panting, Rhodri Thomas, James Littlewood and Kieron Burridge making up our top 10 men. Bethan Moor was 5th female overall with Angharad Croot, Freya Allen, Jules Esmond, Marina Konstantinova, Fiona Drysdale, Jo Jenkins, Alison Allen, Gem Richards and Denise Bradley making up our top 10 ladies. We had several members run their first BCRL of this year whilst Rhodri Davies, Tom Evans and Gavin George ran their first BCRL fixture for the club. After just 3 events, 135 different OPR members have run for us in the BCRL this year. We were third in the team scoring on the night and remain third in the overall standings after 3 events.

Rack Raid

This was the clubs 5^th time competing at the Rack Raid relays – a 100 mile, 13 stage relay over 1 day. This year, Leanne Parsons kicked off proceedings in her second Rack Raid appearance. Gem Richards was on stage 2 after a call up with less than 24 hours notice and just 8 weeks after giving birth to her second child. For legs 3-5 we had Rack Raid debuts from Marina Konstantinova, Alison Allen and Dai Kembery. Next up and taking on the second longest stage (12.4 miles) was Jamie Verran who along with Aled Hughes, had organised this years team for Rack Raid. Jamie smashed his stage with a 1:28:29 on what was his longest ever race distance. Jo Jenkins became the first OPR member to represent the club for a fourth time at Rack Raid  and taking on her 3^rd different stage. Emyr Bissmire returned for a second appearance at Rack Raid and took on the longest stage (13.1 miles) with an incredible 1:31:25 over the hilly course which was only a minute off his overall Half Marathon PB.

I became the second OPR member (after my wife) to represent the club for a fourth time at Rack Raid, taking on the same stage as I had done in 2023 which is 10 miles and has over 1,000 feet of elevation. I was delighted (and very surprised) to beat my previous time by almost 5 minutes with a 1:15:45. Chris Pratt returned to Rack Raid for a second time having previously taken on the Half Marathon leg back in 2023 for the second team that we had in that year. Freya Allen was also back for her second Rack Raid appearance having previously run in 2023. Despite taking on the hilly stage 11, Freya ran what would have been a 10K PB during that stage. Liam O’Sullivan was on stage 12 which took in some familiar sights having lived in the area the route took him through – unfortunately the amphitheatre finish was unexpectedly taken away due to issues outside of the organisers control but Liam finished within the cut off time with family and friends there to support. Who to put on the last stage is always tricky – not only do you have to wait around all day but it’s almost all uphill. Chris Richards stepped up for this one having also run this stage previously and had one of the best finish positions of the day. Most of the team headed to the pub at the end to celebrate with a burger / hot dog and a couple of drinks.

Welsh Castles

Back again for our third year in a row of taking on the 209 mile, 20 stage relay from Caernarfon Castle to Cardiff. A big group of runners plus support crew headed up to North Wales early Friday afternoon. Jonathan Matthews kicked off proceedings from Caernarfon Castle in his second Welsh Castles appearance despite only joining the club at the start of last year. Our most experienced Castles veteran, Jason Griffiths returned to make it 3 years out of 3 representing OPR having represented other teams several times before that. Niki Puleio also made it 3 out of 3 and also has the added kudos of taking on mountain stages on each of the 3 years. Our third and final ‘ever-present’ was next up with Rhodri Thomas taking on stage  4 having done stages 2 and 19 previously. Tom Mahoney, Aled Hughes, Dylan Panting and Bethan Moor took on stages 5 to 8 respectively having all represented the club once previously at Castles. We then had a Castles debut for John Batchelor on stage 9 with probably some of the biggest cheers of the whole weekend as he took on ‘the travelator’ finish. John Burridge was also making his Castles debut and smashed the longest stage of the weekend with a 13.1 mile mountain stage to finish off day 1.

Onto Day 2 and a very early start for first time Castles runner Connor Panting on another of the mountain stages. Next up was a second appearance for Keith Coleman before our second female runner of the weekend and first time Castles runner, Angharad Croot, took on stage 13. Paul Teesdale took on the infamous Drovers stage which takes in over 1,600 feet of elevation in less than 11 miles. Toby Kearns took on the second longest stage before Dan Richards took on the final mountain stage of the weekend. After joining the Rack Raid team as a replacement, I was the only runner in the club to end up doing both Rack Raid and Castles as I took on stage 17 in what was my second Castles appearance. Thomas Daly stepped in with just 48 hours to go to take on stage 18 in what was his longest official race. Chris Collin was next up and was running his second stage of the weekend, having run for South Wales Police the day before! Scott Gray was awarded the ‘glory leg’ and brought it home for the team with a new finish in Pontcanna Fields.

It was amazing to have all 20 runners at the finish and the biggest support crew of the 3 years so far. Our captain for the weekend, Dai Kembery presented the t-shirts whilst our chairman, Gregg Allen, gave a speech to cap off an incredible weekend.

In terms of the result, we were well over 2 hours quicker than our previous best year (2023) and finished 28^th of out of 61 teams which far exceeded our expectations. It’s fair to say that all 20 runners absolutely smashed it and everyone involved had an amazing weekend. A huge thanks to Dawn Hopkins, Dai Kembery, Nicky Bennett and Niki Puleio who did a big part of the pre-event organising, and to the team of supporters and drivers without whom, such a successful weekend just wouldn’t be possible.

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.

parkrun

April saw 272 parkrun finishes across 79 parkruns. There was plenty of international tourism with the Atkin family visiting Quinns Rock and Carine Glades parkruns in Australia, Sara Johns visited Taupo and Whangarei parkruns in New Zealand, five Phoenix members at Hasenheide parkrun ahead of the Berlin Half Marathon whilst Satera James visited the nearby Mauerweg parkrun. Johnson’s Tours visited Chipping Norton School parkrun whilst there were also many London parkruns ahead of the Marathon.

On the speedy side, Angelo Nico Doria was first finisher at both Maesteg on the same day Angharad Croot was first female finisher. John Burridge picked up another first finisher token at Aberfields whilst Katie Plimmer was also first female at Maesteg during the month. Our parkrun times ranged from 18 minutes to 61 minutes.

Alison Allen nicely timed her 250th parkrun to coincide with her birthday with a plenty of Phoenix members joining her to celebrate at Maesteg parkrun. There were no other official parkrun milestones although there was another birthday celebration with the biggest turnout of OPR members at Maesteg so far this year for Jayne Bissmire’s birthday celebrations.

Races

April saw the return of the popular Severn Bridge 5 milers with a glorious evening for their sunset run. Alison Allen was our first runner back and along with Jo Jenkins, Jayne Bissmire and Jade B, they picked up first place in the ladies team competition! I was our only male runner at the event whilst for the ladies we also had Alice Jenkins, Rosie Plimmer and Abby O’Brien at the event. Further afield, Dave and Bev Sheard ran the Lincoln 10K. Aled Jenkins became our second fastest ever member at 10K with a 32;41 at Gorseinon 10K which I don’t think is known for being a PB course. Dawn Wright also ran at that event.

There were several Half Marathons with Phoenix finishers during the month with Sharon and Debbie taking on the Westbirt Half Marathon. We had a couple of international half marathons with 6 runners taking on the Berlin Half Marathon. Claire DB was our first runner in 1:47 followed by Peter Robinson who I believe becomes our first member to have already completed the Super Halves. Another Super Halves regular, Martin Beard was next up, followed by Sarah Davies, Lee DB and Dawn Hopkins. Our other international half was in Dubrovnik (Croatia) where Kaye Pedler, Paul Barrett, Melinda Thomas, Alexis Barrett and Sian Jenkins completed the course in hot conditions.

James Marsh and Heather Morgan completed the Brighton Marathon whilst Melanie Thomas and Danny Ridley completed the CANNUM 40 mile Ultra Marathon.

In other distances we saw the latest edition of the Vale Coastal races with 5 members taking on the 10 mile distance – well done to Sharon, Debbie, Natasha Pask, Claire Miles and Laura Worrall – and two taking on the 18.5 miler with Rhodri Thomas and James Littlewood completing that distance. I believe it’s the first year since it started in 2015 that we didn’t have anyone in the Ultra which I personally would still highly recommend if you fancy your first attempt beyond a marathon. We also had 9 runners at the Samtampa Memoria run in Porthcawl.

The trail championship fixture for April took our members to Pentyrch for their annual ‘Hill Race’. Myself and Nick Harris actually did this event 11 years ago in 2014 but whilst I only returned once (2015) until giving another go this year, Nick was on his 7th outing. We were joined by David Sheard who has previously completed the course in 2018 and also Katie Plimmer and James Littlewood who were newbies to the event. It’s a classified fell race which basically means its very steep in places, has lots of elevation and doesn’t always follow well trodden paths. There’s one section where unless you’re in the top 1% of mountain runners, you have to walk for a significant amount of time as it’s that steep and even walking it is really hard work! Both Katie and myself ranged from mile splits of 7 minute miles to 13 minute miles on our Strava uploads. I feel like I’m not selling this but it is actually a great event – nice community feel and only £10 to enter. The distance had been cut from 7 miles to just under 6 miles due to some storm damage in a forestry section from earlier in the year which hadn’t been cleared. I don’t think any of us were complaining about the cut in distance on what was probably the hottest evening so far this year. James Littlewood was our first runner back followed by Katie, myself, Dave and Nick.

Big Moose

20 OPR members were part of 6,069 people to sign up for the Big Moose Fun Run in Bute Park with distances ranging from 5K to 50K. Ria Ross, Sian Jenkins, Nic Miles and Claire Miles ran the 5K. We had 8 runners in the 10K lead home by Liam O’Sullivan and finishing with Laura Worrall. In the Half Marathon, Tom Mahoney managed to weave his way through the crowds to run 1:36 whilst Bethan Moor ran an impressive 1:43 in her first Half Marathon with the club. Half Marathon regular Peter Robinson was up next whilst Marina Konstantinova ran her fastest Half Marathon time of 1:54. Alison Allen completed our 5 Half Marathoners. Chris Pratt completed the Marathon, however, as it’s a ‘fun run’ and not officially measured then unfortunately it doesn’t count towards his 100 marathon quest but it does count towards something far more important – an OPR milestone t-shirt as we still count it! This has only occurred to me whilst writing this but me and Jo became the only married couple currently in the club to run an ultra on the same day as we both completed the 50K distance. Kudos to Jo who fell only 8 miles into it, cutting both legs, her hand and even her face but got back up and carried on – she also did an extra lap afterward to complete 55K and beat her previous longest distance of the Vale Ultra which she did back in 2023.

Newport races

On the same day as the Big Moose we also had 28 runners at Newport where they had races over 10K, HM and Marathon distances. The 10K was by far the most popular choice for our members with 19 of the 28 running that distance with some top performances throughout the field and no less than 10 PB’s. Well done to Paul Teesdale (34:51), Thomas Daly (37:56), Jonathan Matthews (40:29), Angharad Croot (44:32), Hattie James (46:35), Lee DB (50:19), Ashley Howells (51:59), John Batchelor (52:55), Rosie Plimmer (1:13:12) and Alice Jenkins (1:16:54). Awesome performances all round but special shout outs to Lee DB who smashed his PB by several minutes, Ashley Howells who beat a 10K time that had stood for 7 years and well done to Rosie Plimmer who might be the one to stop her sister Katie winning most improved female for a third year in a row! We had 5 runners in the Half Marathon with new member Hugh Prescott leading the way coming in just under 2 hours and Vickie Blake our final finisher who was a guide runner at the event. Of the 4 members who ran the marathon, Gareth Richards ran 3:06:25 for a new club age category record and a Good for Age qualifying time for London. A few days later they made the time required even faster at sub 3:07 for a 50-55 year old male. Considering Gareth is our fastest over 50 by some distance (and one of our fastest taking into account members of all ages), that does seem like an insane qualifying ask. With limited GFA places, we’ll have to wait and see if his time will be fast enough if he chooses to apply. Robert Green ran an impressive 3:34. As previously alluded to – Katie Plimmer is already staking a claim for a third most improved female with a 10K PB already under her belt this season and she added a huge marathon PB to that with a 3:49:40. Of current members, only Claire DB has run quicker which was also in Newport, back in 2018. Josh Parry completed our marathon runners on the day.

London and Manchester Marathons

Arguably the biggest day of marathon running in the UK with over 80,000 runners across the two events saw a dozen of our members split equally across the two events. Starting with London where despite a significantly hampered build up due to injury, Niki Puleio somehow managed to pull out a 2:55 clocking to add to his growing list of sub 3 marathon times. Scott Gray was agonisingly close for a second time in less than 6 months to getting a sub 3 but just faded towards the end finishing in a time of 3:01:37. Incredible how much emphasis we put on sub xxx times as clearly 3:01 is unbelievably quick and to be celebrated. Neil Ridley ran 3:43 whilst our only PB at London was for first time marathoner Hattie James who ran a 4:02 to join the top 10 list of fastest female marathoners in the club. Our marathon maestro Carl Walsh collected his 5th World Major medal with a 5:01 in a year that’s included limited running so far due to ongoing knee issues. Our final runner was Karl Johnson in 6:24 who raised an incredible amount for charity as part of his efforts.

Over to Manchester where incredibly, despite warm conditions on the day, we had a clean sweep of PB’s for our 6 runners. Connor and Dylan Panting followed up on impressive marathon times a few months back in Valencia to set new PB’s of 3:08 and 3:12 respectively – going on their half way splits, it looks like there might be more to come in better conditions as well. Matt Edwards ran 3:30 exactly. Jonathan Matthews continues to show why he was awarded Best Newcomer at Presentation Night as he continues to get better and better with a marathon debut of 3:40 to add to PB’s at 10K and Half Marathon already this year. Long standing member Sian Price ran an incredible 3:51 to beat her previous best of 3:55 set in London 2019. Sian joins Claire DB as the only current female members of the club to have run two sub 4 hour marathons. Our final runner and PB achiever was Deb Edwards in 4:54 in an incredibly successful day for our Phoenix runners in Manchester.

Coming up

May begins with the first BCRL fixture and another following just 3 weeks later. Teams are being confirmed for Rack Raid and Welsh Castles. Plus our first social event is now in the calendar thanks to the new social committee team. Exciting times ahead!

parkruns

January saw 300 parkrun finishes across 56 parkruns. Aberfields hosted their first New Years Day parkrun which at the time of writing remains by far the wettest parkrun of the year so far. The theme appeared to be ‘Farms’ for Johnsons Tours with a group of 5 OPR members at Jersey Farm and then 11 at Frogmary Farm during the month. Chris Roberts visited the relatively new Battersea parkrun which has had over 1,000 runners almost every week since it started with 1,100 on the day he visited. This was still less than the 1,569 finishers at Bushy when Melanie and Gareth Thomas visited earlier in the month. A couple of Aberfields cancellations in the month resulted in bumper attendances at Porthcawl with 41 and 38 OPR members crossing the line on the weeks that Aberfields were off – the second of which was Liz Davis’ 250th parkrun which she had originally intended celebrating at Aberfields having been part of the team that started the parkrun. A crowd of Phoenix runners took over a corner of the Waterfront after the parkrun for cake alongside their breakfast! On the speedy side, Jules Esmond was first female finisher at Cycle Route 43 parkrun, Paul Teesdale was first finisher overall at Maesteg whilst Angelo Nico Doria was first finisher at both Porthcawl and Prospect parkruns. His time of 16:54 at Porthcawl was the fastest time of any OPR member in January and is still the fastest time as at the end of March.

February saw 279 parkrun finishes across 65 parkruns. Aled and I became the first OPR members to run Aberfields on 50 occasions whilst later in the month I became the only second member of the club to reach the 500 club with Luke Davis celebrating his 50th parkrun on the same day. We were joined by 21 others including Jonathan Matthews who was first finisher overall whilst Angharad Croot was first female finisher. We had more female first finishers in month with Claire DB at Lydney and Bethan Moor at Maesteg. Johnsons Tours headed to Valentines parkrun with 16 OPR members in attendance. There was a triple celebration at Porthcawl with Freya Allen running her 100th parkrun whilst Marina Konstantinova and Jules Esmond ran their 50th parkruns which prompted another big Porthcawl attendance with 38 OPR members running there that day.

March saw 5 parkrun opportunities with a huge 379 finishes across 95 parkruns. The number of finishers is our second highest month ever whilst 95 parkruns is easily a record and goes to show the incredible lengths our members go to in order to get certain letters, or parkrun whilst away for the weekend or simply to tick off another parkrun venue. March appeared to be the month for international tourism with Dylan Panting visiting Hasenheide parkrun in Germany, Mel and Gareth Thomas visiting Zuiderpark in the Netherlands a week before Jo and I visited the nearby Kralinse Bos parkrun. Much further afield we had Vickie Blake at Quinns Rocks in Australia and Sara Johns at Orakei Bay in New Zealand. Johnsons Tours had some quite extreme trips in month with an early Saturday morning flight for 5 of our members to Edinburgh for Oriam parkrun and a 10+ hour round bus trip to Great Yarmouth parkrun. They also continued their ‘farm’ tourism with Greendale Farm Shop parkrun at the end of the month. Our attendance at Maesteg has dwindled considerably over the past few months, however, a birthday celebration for Jayne Bissmire did attract a crowd of 20 OPR finishers there on the final weekend of the month. A rare month without a first finisher overall, however, Claire DB was first female at Y Promenad and Angharad Croot was first female at Aberfields. Chris Stanlake also celebrated his 250th volunteer credit during the month.

Races

10K

The biggest 10K so far this year has been the Margam 10K where we had 6 runners for what was the March fixture for the Trail Championships. Dylan Panting picked up maximum points for the men despite the race being part of a longer run. He ran with Katie Plimmer who ran a PB of 44:44 despite the undulating course whilst her sister Rosie also picked up a PB at the event. Elsewhere, we had 5 runners at the hilly Pontypool 10K, 3 at Llanelli 10K whilst Kris Denholm ran the 10K distance at Rhayader Round the Lakes.

Half Marathons

The Half Marathon distance always tends to be popular with runners targeting PB’s early in the year or as part of marathon training for Spring marathons. In the first 3 months of this year we’ve had 42 finishes across 9 Half Marathons in 4 different countries! Our international HM’s have included Helen Griffiths and Denise Bradley at Lisbon Half whilst Jo and I ran at Amstelveen Half Marathon (near Amsterdam) where Jo beat her PB which had stood for 6 and a half years with a 1:54:14.

Our biggest half of the month was actually just across the border in Bath where we had 14 runners including a sub 90 minute PB for Harvey Puleio of 1:28:59 after being joined by his dad, Niki. Harriet James clocked one of the fastest female half marathon times in the clubs history with a 1:41:56. Angharad Croot, Hattie, Claire DB and Katie Plimmer all have PB’s within 2 minutes of each other. Presentation night winner, Kaye Pedler also bagged herself a PB at Bath. At Llanelli Half Marathon we had 13 runners who were led back by Paul Teesdale in 1:18:30. Kieron Burridge and Jonathan Matthews joined a growing list of OPR members to join the sub 90 minute Half Marathon club which only had a couple of members in the early years of the club. Kieron ran 1:28:36 whilst Jonathan Matthews ran 1:29:58. Samantha Morgan also bagged herself a PB at Llanelli.

At Newport Half, Paul Teesdale ran a PB of 1:16:56 just 2 weeks after his 1:18 at Llanelli. Toby Kearns ran a 1:25:01 PB. Angharad Croot shot into second in the current female members rankings with a 1:40:39 PB and Jakub Gzik who was a Zero to Hero graduate just a year ago ran a sub 2 hour time for the first time with a 1:59:16. Liam O’Sullivan and Sharon Pritchard also ran at Newport.

Elsewhere, Angelo Nico Doria ran a mind blowing 1:11:33 PB at Reading Half Marathon which places him as our second fastest half marathoner. Our other half marathons in the month included the hilly, multi-terrain Ras Dewi Sant where Katie Plimmer and Chris Richards completed the course, Chris R also ran Liverpool HM, whilst Chris Pratt completed a Half Marathon distance at the inaugural South Wales Phoenix Running event.

Marathons

Chris Pratt joined his Asics Frontrunners to run Seville Marathon in a time of 4:44:14. Jake Tasker was first finisher at Ras Dewi Sant Marathon with a time of 2;53:52 where I doubt they’ve seen too many sub 3 hour finish times. Danny Ridley and Carl Walsh continued their around the World marathon adventures finishing the Tokyo Marathon which is part of the World Marathon Majors. At the end of March, Leanne Parsons and I both completed the marathon distance in the multi looped Phoenix event that I mentioned Chris Pratt did the Half. Jo Jenkins and Simon Melksham both ran 6 laps which was around 20 miles in total.

Other Races

The year kicked off with the Kenfig New Years Day race which was also the final event of the Festive Four. Robert Green was our first runner back and bagged himself top spot in the standing in the Season’s Best category. Freya Allen was our first lady with Jules Esmond next up which contributed to them finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively in the ladies Season’s Best category. All three smashed it over the festive period. In total there were 9 OPR members for the New Years Day race.

The first race of this years Trail Championship saw 12 OPR members travel to Chepstow Race course on a bitterly cold midweek night. Early on, Jake was leading with another runner close by when they ended up going the wrong way and getting back to the finish with the clock only on 16 minutes. I mean, Jake is fast, but 5 miles in 16 minutes is even beyond his capabilities! That resulted in a very unexpected maximum points haul for me and much confusion when myself and Katie Plimmer who finished shortly after couldn’t find Jake anywhere as he’d decided to start again and do the course anyway. Katie was second female overall whilst her, Sarah Davies and new member Katarzyna Krzeminkska also picked up a team prize. In the second fixture of the Trial Championship, David Sheard took on the 8 mile option of the Mayhill Mayhem race whilst Jake Tasker, Katie Plimmer and Danny Ridley ran the 16 miler.

We’ve had mixed success in the XC fixtures this year with an impressive 19 at Margam, 15 at Kenfig but only 10 at Pembrey and 6 at the final fixture in Tairgwaith. Jake won both the Margam and Kenfig fixtures. Well done to Peter Robinson, Jules Esmond and Nick Harris who ran all four West Glam fixtures whilst Gareth Battle, Kevin Raymond, Natasha Pask and Fiona Drysdale all ran three out of four.

Back in January, Gareth Richards, Jonathan Matthews, Keith Coleman and Kris Denholm ran the Lliswerry 8, and we had 10 runners at the mud-fest that is Riverbank Rollick. In March, Gareth and Mel Thomas along with Simon Melksham and Leanne Parsons ran the 30K Rhayader Round the Lakes. Alison Allen, Gareth Thomas and Jayne Bissmire ran the rearranged CF64 race in March after it was cancelled due to weather warnings back in January.

Presentation Night

The first Saturday of March saw the Presentation Night with a record number of awards to celebrate members achievements in 2024. We gathered at the Richard Price Centre after last holding a Presentation Night there 6 years earlier. With this being his final Presentation Night as Chair, Chris provided an outstanding presentation with hundreds of photos, videos (including the customary Marathon Eryri video) and presenting of the awards alongside Alexis. Unfortunately Jake and Katie who won 7 trophies between them had already booked Ras Dewi Sant and a stay in West Wales before the Presentation Night date was announced but I think everyone there was delighted to see them deservedly rack up a whole host of awards. However, it wasn’t just the Jake and Katie show with Coach Kev winning 3 awards for his epic Dragons Back adventure. Claire Dunbar-Bowen and myself were the only other members to pick up more than one award with 23 different members picking up a prize on the night and dozens more receiving votes for Runners Runner or being recognised for their efforts in the Trail Championship and Team Challenge. The list of winners was as follows…

Runners Runner Winner: Katie Plimmer

Runners Runner 2nd Place: Kevin Raymond

Runners Runner Joint 3rd Place: John Batchelor / Laura Worrall

Club Runner: Katie Plimmer

Best Senior Female: Katie Plimmer

Best Senior Male: Jake Tasker

Best Veteran Male: John Burridge

Best Veteran Female: Claire Dunbar Bowen

Best Super-Veteran Male: Gareth Richards

Best Super-Veteran Female: Denise Bradley  

Most Improved Male: Ceri Jones

Most Improved Female: Katie Plimmer  

Best Newcomer Male: John Matthews

Best Newcomer Female: Marina Konstantinova                                    

Trail Championship Winner Male: Jake Tasker

2nd Place: Gareth Jenkins

3rd Place: David Sheard

Trail Championship Winner Female: Katie Plimmer

2nd Place: Claire Dunbar Bowen

3rd Place: Sarah Davies

Best Marathon Male: Nico Doria

Best Marathon Female: Kaye Pedler

Best Ultra Male: Kevin Raymond

Best Ultra Female: Leanne Parsons  

Zero to Hero: Rosie Plimmer    

Team Championship Winners: Gareth Jenkins / Tammie Baker  

Spirit of the Phoenix: Dawn Hopkins

Chairmans Award: Jo Pratt        

Outstanding Achievement: Kevin Raymond

AGM

The end of March saw the latest AGM and a significant amount of changes in the elected roles. Most notably, Chris Pratt stepping down as Chair after almost 8 years with Greg Allen taking over the honour of leading our club. I also stepped down as male captain after being part of the captaincy team for 8+ years with fellow founding member of the club, Aled Hughes taking over the role. Peter Harrop stepped down as Complaints Officer, Ian Lewis as Treasurer, and Jo Pratt as Social Secretary – all of whom had also been in those roles for around 8 years. As Greg pointed out in his first speech as the incoming Chair, it was great to see some newer, younger members taking on roles on committee as well with Ben Batchelor and Jonathan Matthews joining the general committee. There’s actually too many changes to mention here but it’s an exciting time for the club.

RED January… and beyond

Dozens of members took on the challenge of RED January which originally started as a ‘Run Every Day’ challenge many years ago but has since evolved into ‘Realistic Exercise Daily’ or similar variations. A huge thanks again to Natasha Pask who first set up the team for 2025 and encouraged people to join and then to Freya Allen who encouraged us all to post photo’s and Strava screenshots of our activities to do daily photo collages. Activities ranged from dance classes, gym classes, swimming, cycling, walking and of course running. On the running side of things, I believe Freya Allen, Alison Allen, Karen Green, Rob Green, David Sheard, Jo Jenkins and myself all ran every day during the month (apologies if I missed anyone). I carried on to 52 days before having a rest day and celebrated the 50th day by running 50K from Bridgend to Margam Park and then back via the coast (Kenfig, Porthcawl, Merthyr Mawr). At the time of writing, Jo and David are still going with their run streak and are about to hit 100 days in a row. What I don’t think many of the club are aware of though is that we actually have a member on a 2,600+ day running streak – Karen Green has somehow managed to run every day for over 7 years! Natasha’s initial post has a lot to answer for in the Jenkins household – neither me or Jo had intending running every day in January but that’s escalated to Jo running every day this year so far and I decided that if I was going to run every day in January then I would take on the 496K challenge which had been on my radar for a few years. This involves running at least 1K on the 1st of the month, 2K on the 2nd of the month… and so on to running 31K on the 31st! It was one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever taken on and of course, I decided to make it even harder by running at least a Half Marathon for the final 15 days of the month when I actually only needed to for the last 11. The final 7 days totalled 120 miles!

Welsh Castles and Rack Raid

In early March we had confirmation we had been selected as one of the teams this year. In the hope we would get in, members were given several months to run a qualifying time which the deadline at the end of March if they were interested in representing the club at Welsh Castles. As I write this, teams are being finalised for both Welsh Castles and Rack Raid where we will hopefully see 30+ different members get the opportunity to represent the club.

Bridgend County Running League

Entries are now open for this seasons BCRL with the same 7 fixtures around the same dates as last year to keep some consistency. It would be great to see 100+ sign ups which we have managed on several occasions in the past few years. Every runner counts for this one.

What a start to the year and lots of exciting times to come.

Headline stats

parkruns – 3,434 finishes over 664 events

5K races – 547 finishes over 26 events

10K races – 326 finishes over 33 events

Half Marathon races – 168 finishes over 25 events

Marathon races – 75 finishes over 19 events

Ultra races – 22 finishes over 16 events

Other races – 831 finishes over 62 events

Total – 5,403 finishes over 845 events

parkrun

2024 saw 3,434 parkrun finishes (up 69 on last year) across 664 events (down 69 on last year). Our members visited 261 different parkruns (up 51 on last year) around the world including Wales, England, Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, USA, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore and Poland.

2024 saw our parkrun tourism obsession grow with more members than ever running whilst on trips away or seeking out certain letters or numbers for the parkrun alphabet or other different parkrun challenges. Karl Johnson offered tourism trips that varied from North Wales to England to overnight stopovers and overseas parkruns. Dawn Hopkins and Sarah Davies both achieved their second parkrun alphabet whilst Sarah also became the 7th member to run at 100 different parkrun venues.

Of course, it’s not all about tourism and we continued to have big numbers at our home parkruns of Porthcawl, Maesteg and Aberfields. Aberfields was the venue for this years Zero to Hero graduation which was one of the biggest club turnouts of the year whilst there was also a significant turnout at Aberfields for Nick Harris 500th parkrun at the end of the year.

Number of parkruns completed in 2024

1. Jamie Verran – 54 – every UK parkrun day
2. Nick Harris – 53
3. Dawn Hopkins – 52 – new female club record
4. Kris Denholm – 52
5. Melanie Thomas – 50
6. Sarah Davies – 49
7. Dai Kembery – 47
8. Aled Hughes – 47
9. Linda Harris – 47
10. Gareth Jenkins – 46

Dawn and Melanie became the first female members of the club to achieve ‘Gold Obsessive’ status by running 50 or more parkruns in a calendar year. Sarah would also have achieved this had it not been for the red weather warning for Storm Darragh. Jamie Verran continues his unbelievable run of not missing a UK parkrun day since his first back in April 2022 and is now on an unbroken streak of 149. Others who ran 40+ parkruns which gets them a ‘silver obsessive badge’ on the parkrun challenges but didn’t make the top 10 include Chris Pratt, Toby Kearns, Debbie Bennion, Sally Pensom, Saul Harris and Claire Goldsworthy. Jo Jenkins still leads the way for most parkruns overall by a female member and was the first to reach 300 parkruns.

This year we’ve seen plenty of milestones…

• 500 – Nick Harris
• 250 – Claire Goldsworthy
• 250 – Bev Sheard
• 250 – Dawn Hopkins
• 250 – Karl Johnson
• 250 – Saul Harris
• 100- Jamie Verran
• 100 – Gareth Davies
• 100 – Alexis Barrett
• 100 – Dawn Wright
• 100 – Darija Keenor
• 100 – Karen Dando
• 100 – Wayne Hayhurst
• 100 – Gwyneth Steddy
• 100 – Emyr Bissmire
• 100 – Jayne Bissmire
• 100 – Lucy Howells
• 100 – Kaye Pedler
• 100 – Claire Dunbar-Bowen
• 50 – Ceri Jones
• 50 – Lee Dunbar-Bowen
• 50 – Vickie Blake
• 50 – Gareth Thomas
• 50 – Jason Griffiths
• 50 – Helen Griffiths
• 50 – Kate Atkin
• 50 – Deb Griffin
• 50 – John Burridge
• 50 – Mike Nicholson Lewis
• 50 – Jake Tasker
• 50 – James Marsh
• 50 – Heather Morgan
• 50 – Jonathan Matthews
• 50 – Paul Harris
• 50 – Carl Walsh

Another huge year for milestones with our biggest yet with Nick Harris becoming the first member of the club to reach 500 on 21st December. Next year will see two more join him (myself and Chris Pratt). We had a record number of 250 milestones in a calendar year with 5 including Claire Goldsworthy who ran 249 of them at Porthcawl and only broke the 100% record at one venue a couple of weeks before her 250 milestone.

parkrun tourism

Sarah Davies became the 7th member to achieve ‘Cowell Club’ status by running at her 100th different parkrun venue. A record year for tourism saw 11 number of members add 20 or more different parkrun venues to their count. Last year that number was just 5 members.

Number of new parkrun venues visited in 2024

1. Darija Keenor – 31
2. Dawn Hopkins – 29
3. Karl Johnson – 25
4. Melanie Thomas – 23
5. Vickie Blake – 23
6. Sarah Davies – 22
7. Nick Harris – 22
8. Gareth Thomas – 22
9. Saul Harris – 22
10. Kaye Pedler- 21

Most parkrun tourisms overall as at the end of 2024

1. Karl Johnson – 157
2. Dawn Hopkins – 150
3. Chris Roberts – 141
4. Julie Ransom – 127
5. Shawn Cullen – 117
6. Gareth Jenkins – 109
7. Sarah Davies – 107
8. Kris Denholm – 97
9. Melanie Thomas – 86
10. Jo Jenkins – 81

During 2024, Dawn moved into second place ahead of Chris Roberts who had a quieter year for new venues. Sarah Davies climbed a couple of places whilst Melanie Thomas features in the top 10 for the first time. We now have 29 members that have run 50 or more different parkrun venues and 54 that have run more than 20 different venues.

Top 10 parkrun times

Jacob Tasker has the fastest 3 times of the year with 15:24, 15:49, 16:15, 16:19, 16:21, 16:37, 16:38 – Jacob only ran 8 parkuns this year, finishing first overall in 7 of them. Those 7 first finishes includes 6 different venues including beating his own fastest time of anyone in the club at Maesteg. We had 25 first finishers in 2024 including Nicky Bennett, Nico, Paul Teesdale, Jamie Verran, Niki Puleio, Aled Hughes, Rhodri Thomas and Jonathan Matthews.

For the ladies, Bethan Moor clocked the fastest parkrun time of the year with 20:55 with Katie Plimmer running a parkrun PB of 21:27 in the final parkrun of the year. Our ladies picked up 23 first female finishers between them with Carys Bissmire (6), Bethan Moor (5), Sarah Davies (2), Alison Allen (2), Arwen Rees (2) plus one each for Claire Dunbar-Bowen, Dawn Hopkins, Deborah Edwards, Fiona Drysdale, Freya Allen and Marina Konstantinova.

Volunteering

Top 10 parkrun volunteer credits in 2024

1. Chris Stanlake 83 – new club record
2. Greg Allen 61
3. Alison Allen 58
4. Karl Johnson 58
5. Jay Howells 50
6. Gareth Jenkins 42
7. Rhiannon Whiteley 36
8. Angela Parry 35
9. Toni Howells 35
10. Debbie Bennion / Sharon Pritchard 30

Members with 100 or more parkrun volunteer credits

1. Alison Allen 343
2. Greg Allen 320
3. Karl Johnson 279
4. Chis Stanlake 226
5. Rhiannon Whiteley 177
6. Angela Parry 166
7. Mia Allen 154
8. Rhiain Casseldine-Forman 135
9. Freya Allen 124
10. Sharon Pritchard 124
11. Gareth Jenkins 110
12. Jay Howells 105
13. Liam O’Sullivan 100
14. Debbie Bennion 100

Chris Stanlakes 83 volunteer credits in a single calendar year is a new club record, beating the 68 that Stephne Puddy set in 2023. Of the top 10 volunteers for 2024, 9 out of 10 did more volunteering than in 2023 with Angela Parry only doing a couple less than her 2023 total, but still a hefty contribution of 35. Aberfields parkruns volunteer roster is regularly filled with OPR members and has been a significant change in how many of our members are now regular parkrun volunteers. The Team Challenge also encouraged volunteering this year. Other regular volunteers this year have been Claire Goldsworthy, Dai Kembery, Jamie Verran, Judith Howells, Liam O’Sullivan, Nick Harris and Chris Pratt who have all volunteered on over 20 occasions. Dai Kembery is just a couple away from being our next member to reach 100 volunteer credits. A huge thank you to all the volunteers.

5K races

OPR members ran in 26 different 5K events this year with a record 527 finishes and 42 PB’s. Our biggest 5K (and biggest overall event of the year) was Merthyr Mawr 5K where we had 98 finishers.

Late spring and summer saw the usual plethora of 5K events with 3 SSAFA events, 3 Aberavon events, 3 Swansea Bay events plus the super speedy Race for Victory event in Whitchurch with many PB’s throughout the club.

Top 10 fastest men (measured 5K races only excluding parkrun)

1. Jacob Tasker – 14:53 (PB and new club record)
2. Angelo Doria – 16:10 (PB)
3. Daniel Richards – 16:40 (PB)
4. Paul Teesdale – 17:11 (PB)
5. Niki Puleio – 17:19 (PB)
6. Nicky Bennett – 17:58
7. Jamie Verran – 18:21 (PB)
8. Aled Hughes – 18:24
9. Gareth Richards – 18:24
10. John Burridge 18:39

In total, we had record 26 men run a 5K or parkrun under 20 minutes this year with a record 16 of them being sub 19.

Top 10 fastest women (measured 5K races only – excluding parkrun)

1. Katie Plimmer – 20:52 (PB)
2. Bethan Moor – 20:55
3. Willow Hughes – 21:05 (PB)
4. Carys Cronin – 22:29
5. Sian Price – 22:37
6. Claire Dunbar-Bowen – 22:43
7. Sarah Davies – 22:54 (PB)
8. Gemma Richards – 23:13 (PB)
9. Angharad Croot – 23:35 (PB)
10. Marina Konstantinova – 24:21 (PB)

In 2023, our fastest female time was 21:57 and 10th fastest female ran 25:30 showing remarkable improvement across our quickest ladies.

10K

OPR members ran in 33 different 10K events this year with 326 finishes and 59 PB’s. All figures are higher than 2023. For the second year in a row Debbie Bennion was our most prolific 10K-er with 7 events. Our biggest attended 10K events of the year was Porthcawl 10K with 67 members completing the course.

Top 10 fastest males

1. Jacob Tasker – 30:57 (PB and new club record)
2. Daniel Richards – 34:16 (PB)
3. Angelo Doria – 34:26 (PB)
4. Nicky Bennett – 34:53
5. Niki Puleio – 36:07 (PB)
6. Paul Teesdale – 37:01 (PB)
7. John Burridge – 37:39 (PB)
8. Kieron Burridge – 38:26 (PB)
9. Aled Hughes – 38:26
10. Scott Gray – 38:38 (PB)

Thomas Daly, Gareth Richards, Toby Kearns, Connor Panting and Dylan Panting all also ran sub 40 making it the most members under 40 minutes in a single calendar year in the history of the club.

Top 10 fastest female

1. Gemma Richards – 46:08 (PB)
2. Katie Plimmer – 46:37 (PB)
3. Carys Cronin – 48:33
4. Claire Dunbar-Bowen – 48:46
5. Angharad Croot – 48:46
6. Willow Hughes – 49:31
7. Sarah Davies – 49:41
8. Arwen Rees – 50:28 (PB)
9. Mia Allen – 53:36
10. Alison Allen – 54:02

In 2023, our fastest female time was 47:11 and 10th fastest female ran 56:46 showing remarkable improvement across our quickest ladies.

Half Marathon

OPR members ran in 25 different Half Marathon events this year with 168 finishes and 24 PB’s. Our biggest attended Half Marathon was of course Cardiff with 82 members completing the course.

Top 10 Fastest Male

1. Jacob Tasker – 1:08:11 (PB and new club record)
2. Aled Jenkins – 1:11:59 (PB)
3. Angelo Doria – 1:14:40 (PB)
4. Paul Teesdale – 1:20:43 (PB)
5. John Burridge – 1:23:08 (PB)
6. Aled Hughes – 1:24:04 (PB)
7. Connor Panting – 1:24:37 (PB)
8. Scott Gray – 1:25:38 (PB)
9. Gareth Richards – 1:26:08
10. Toby Kearns – 1:28:23 (PB)

With Tom Mahoney also going sub 90 minutes, we had a record number of members running under 1 hour 30 minutes.

Top 10 fastest female

1. Willow Hughes – 1:38:31 (PB)
2. Katie Plimmer – 1:42:15 (PB)
3. Carys Bissmire – 1:45:11 (PB)
4. Claire Dunbar-Bowen – 1:51:30
5. Arwen Rees – 1:54:13 (PB)
6. Marina Konstantinova – 1:57:27 (PB)
7. Carol Bartle – 1:57:48
8. Alison Allen – 2:00:43
9. Freya Allen – 2:00:58
10. Deb Edwards – 2:02:46

Marathon

OPR members ran in 19 different marathons this year with 75 finishes and 24 PB’s. There’s a dedicated section to Carl Walsh’s adventures later in the blog. Some other highlights this year include Aled Jenkins running a club record 2:30:40 at London Marathon, Niki Puleio being selected to run for Wales at the Chester Marathon and a sub 3 hour debut marathon for Nico. On the female side, Marina Konstantinova ran the Riga Marathon and then beat that time at Eryri, Katie Plimmer ran a female club record course time at Eryri, whilst Shelley Evans completed the Tenby Marathon as the final event of the Long Course Weekend.

Aside from those already mentioned, there were PB’s for Gareth Richards at the Great Welsh Marathon, Martin Beard and Jo Rowling at London, whilst Kaye Pedler, Nicola Veasey and Rya Davies got PB times at Newport.

Our biggest marathon of the year was Marathon Eryri (Snowdon) with 15 runners where Gareth Richards was our first runner with a 3:24. Aled Jenkins ran 3:30 after cycling from home to the race the day before. Jo Jenkins knocked over 35 minutes off her previous best time on the course with this being her 4th Marathon Eryri. Leanne Khan ran her debut marathon at Snowdonia.

A close second for biggest marathon of the year was Valencia where we had 14 runners. Scott Gray ran an outstanding 3:01:15 whilst there were PB’s for Connor Panting, Wayne Hayhurst, Dylan Panting, John Burridge, Tom Mahoney and Josh Parry. Gareth Richards ran sub 4 hours less than a month after being hospitalised due a fall resulting in broken ribs, a broken wrist and a glued head!

Aside from London, we also had Danny Ridley, Claire Dunbar-Bowen and Carl Walsh at Chicago which is another of the Marathon Majors. Aled Hughes also headed to America completing the LA Marathon. The quirkiest marathon of the year has to go to the Green Mile Prison Marathon that Chris Pratt completed which included less than a mile loop on repeat around a former prison including hundreds of steps.

Top 10 fastest Male

1. Aled Jenkins – 2:30:40 (PB and new club record)
2. Angelo Nico Doria – 2:46:40 (PB) – also ran 2:56:59
3. Niki Puleio – 2:56:26 – also ran 3:00:38
4. Scott Gray – 3:01:15 (PB)
5. Aled Hughes – 3:03:18 – also ran 3:07 and 3:24
6. Paul Smith – 3:08:02
7. Gareth Richards – 3:10:30 (PB and age category club record) – also ran 3:11 and 3:24
8. Connor Panting – 3:12:43 (PB)
9. Wayne Hayhurst – 3:14:19 (PB)
10. Dai James – 3:15:58

Top 10 fastest Female

1. Claire Dunbar-Bowen – 4:09:48
2. Katie Plimmer – 4:24:27
3. Emma Loyns – 4:28:24
4. Sarah Davies – 4:35:29
5. Rya Davies – 4:48:58
6. Kaye Pedler – 4:48:58
7. Nicola Veasey – 4:48:58
8. Marina Konstantinova – 4:49:00
9. Fiona Drysdale – 4:59:19
10. Jo Jenkins – 5:05:39

Ultras / Challenges / Crazy Feats of Endurance

From 26.2 miles to 100 miles – although there were less total marathon and ultra finishes this year, there were still some exceptional feats of endurance this year with many taking on multiple long distance challenges.

I have to start with Carl Walsh who ran 4 marathons and 9 ultra marathons this year to add to his 100+ marathon/ultra events. Carl set himself more challenges this year starting off with completing his quest to run a marathon on all 7 continents. Only 1,034 people had achieved this at the time Carl completed that challenge. The final continent involved flying to the most southernly city in the world in Argentina and then getting ship to the Antarctica Circle to run the marathon with some penguin and whale spotting along the way. Next up was a marathon on Everest with fellow club member Danny Ridley. This involved 12 days of hiking and acclimatising to the altitude with them reaching over 18,000 feet at one point before even running the marathon itself. During 2024, Carl ran his 50th ultra and is now up to 115 marathons or ultras overall.

In August 2024, Kevin Raymond took on one of the toughest multi-day running events in the world with the Dragons Back race. 236 miles from north Wales to south Wales over mountainous off road terrain with 54,000 feet of elevation (not far off climbing Everest from sea level… twice!) over the course of 6 days. Kevin battled his way through 50k of the most challenging mountains and terrain that Wales has to offer on Day 1 and then another 59k on Day 2 but was unfortunately timed out. However, this wasn’t the end and Kevin was able to continue on the ‘Hatchling’ event which involves still running at least part of every days course for the remainder of the race. Over the 6 days, Kevin completed around 146 miles with over 43,000 feet of elevation and a total time of 56 hours and 26 minutes.

It was a mixed year for Gareth Richards who was aiming to become the first member to complete a 100 mile ultra in under 24 hours with the Dragon 100 being the target. He took on the Pembrokeshire 100 for the first time but injured his ankle within the first 12 miles. Incredibly he still finished the race which included 17,000 feet of elevation in 26 hours and was 6th overall. Unfortunately, despite best efforts and starting the Dragon 100 just 7 weeks after the Pembrokeshire 100, Gareth had to pull out after around a marathon distance due to ongoing ankle issue.

We had a couple of debut ultra finishers this year with Ashley Howells completing his first ultra at the St Illtyds 50K Ultra and Alexis Barrett at the HOWUM 30 miler. Leanne Parsons ran her furthest ultra and the furthest of any of our female members this year with the Dragon 50 miler. Dai James continued his ultra journey with the VOGUM where he was 4th overall on the 40 mile course from Porthcawl to Cardiff, completed the Dragon 50 on largely the same course but starting from Kenfig, plus completed the RIDUM 31 mile ultra.

In October 2024, I set myself a challenge of running 500 kilometers (310 miles) during the month in memory of colleague who passed away a few weeks earlier. I set myself the challenge to raise awareness of mental health issues as well raise funds for a charity he had supported. What started out as a plan to have at least 5 or 6 rest days and hopefully hit the target on the final day escalated into me running every day during October and ending up finishing on 658 kilometers (408.8 miles) which works out at an average of a Half Marathon every day for the 31 days. My shortest day was 10K (6.2 miles) whilst my longest was Marathon Eryri towards the end of the month at 42K (26.2 miles).

Longest distances achieved in ultra’s in 2024

1. Kevin Raymond – 146 miles over 6 days – Dragons Back

2. Gareth Richards – 100 miles – Pembrokeshire 100

3-4. Dai James / Leanne Parsons – 50 miles – Dragon 50

5. Carl Walsh – 48 miles – Brecon to Cardiff Extreme version

6. Dai James – 40 miles – VOGUM

7. Carl Walsh – 32 miles – Beast of Llangattock

8-9. Carl Walsh / Emma Loyns – 32 miles – Vale Ultra

10. Everyone else – Alexis Barrett / Paul Barrett / Danny Ridley / Ashley Howells – 30-31 miles – various ultras

Race and overall totals

Total number of events in 2024 (parkruns plus races)

1. Gareth Jenkins 94
2. Dawn Hopkins 84
3. Nick Harris 82
4. Sarah Davies 76
5. Jamie Verran 75
6. Debbie Bennion 73
7. Kris Denholm 72
8. Chris Pratt 70
9. Linda Harris 70
10. Jo Jenkins 69

It’s the 5th time I’ve topped the list but the first time since 2018. After topping the standings in 2023, After topping the standing last year, Aled Hughes wasn’t in the top 20 this year due to other commitments. 26 members did 50 events or more during 2024 which is a slight drop on 2023 when we had 30.

Most Races (not including parkruns)

1. Gareth Jenkins 48
2. Ria Ross 40
3. Caryn Hicks 39
4. Dawn Hopkins 32
5. Jo Jenkins 31
6. Mark Worrall 31
7. Debbie Bennion 30
8. Nick Harris 29
9. Laura Worrall 29
10. Katie Plimmer 29

Overall most events

1. Gareth Jenkins 881
2. Nick Harris 827
3. Chris Pratt 643
4. Aled Hughes 639
5. Dai Kembo 553
6. Dawn Hopkins 515
7. David Sheard 514
8. Kris Denholm 495
9. Jo Jenkins 448
10. Chris Roberts 435

A quiet year for Aled race-wise meant that Chris Pratt returned to 3rd in the standings after Aled took that spot from him during 2023. Dawn Hopkins overtook David Sheard into 6th spot whilst Jo Jenkins overtook Chris Roberts into 9th place. Jo is actually the most recent member to join out of the top 10 having been in the club 8 years compared to 9-12 years for the rest. Our top 10 have run 5,950 events between them. We also have 86 members that have run at least 100 events with the club.

Overall most races (not including parkruns)

1. Gareth Jenkins 388
2. Nick Harris 325
3. Aled Hughes 250
4. Chris Pratt 242
5. Dawn Hopkins 242
6. Denise Bradley 207
7. Mark Worrall 192
8. Sharon Pritchard 191
9. Debbie Bennion 189
10. Jo Jenkins 175

Cross Country

The club continues to participate in both the West Glamorgan League and the Gwent League with separate male and female teams contesting. At the end of the 23-24 West Glam season, our men’s team maintained their place in the top division with a 5th place finish whilst our ladies were 4th in division 2. Due to the postponement of the Pembrey fixture of the West Glam league, there’s only been one fixture so far in the 24/25 season where we had a decent turnout at Aberavon Beach despite it being the same weekend as Marathon Eryri.

Numbers have remained low in the Gwent League with the early afternoon Saturday start times maybe not quite fitting into peoples schedules. Gareth Battle and I were the only runners at Margam earlier this year whilst a last minute appearance from Chris Pratt avoided it being the same two again in Pembrey. We were joined by Ben Williams for the Llandaff fixture but unfortunately he had to pull out during the race leaving the two Gareth’s as the only male OPR members on the results. Our women have faired much better in participation with 5 runners at both Pembrey and Llandaff so far this season.

As a result of some great performances in Pembrey (and a couple of last minutes spots needing filling) then we had 5 OPR members representing South Wales at the Inter-Regional Welsh Championships. Bethan Moor and Jo Jenkins ran in the ladies race whilst I ran in the men’s event. Angelo Doria also received a call up for the Under 20’s men’s team whilst Arwen Rees ran in the Under 20’s women’s race.

Jules Esmond did the most cross country league events notching up 5 events this year whilst I also did 5 cross country events made up of 3 Gwent, 1 West Glam plus the Inter-Regionals.

Bridgend County Running League (BCRL)

150 different members ran at least one BCRL event (down from 153 in 2023). We had 634 finishes (up from 592 in 2023) across the 7 events averaging 90 per fixture (up from 85 in 2023). 28 members ran every fixture (up from 19 in 2023) with a few more only missing one because they volunteered at our own event.

In the men’s scoring we regularly had about 20 men capable of running sub 20 in contention for those top 10 scoring places and with a few new faces this year including Paul Teesdale, Keiron Burridge and Daniel Richards regularly in our top 10. The ladies had tough competition from Bridgend and Porthcawl who had really strong women’s teams, but our ladies held their own and produced some incredibly determined performances throughout the season to keep us in contention. Bethan Moor was our first female in the first 6 events whilst Katie Plimmer was our first female in the final event. Our highest female position overall was 6th which bizarrely our ladies finished in on 5 of the 7 races – Bethan was 6th female overall on four occasions and then Katie was 6th female overall in the final event. Our regulars for the past couple of years, Willow Hughes, Carys Cronin, Claire Dunbar-Bowen, Sarah Davies were joined by the ever improving Arwen Rees and new names to BCRL with us, Gemma Richards and Marina Konstantinova as consistently in our top 10 female places in the events they ran. Then we had a huge number battling it out for the final few top 10 places each time with the likes of Jo Jenkins, Fiona Drysdale, Denise Bradley, Jules Esmond, Alison Allen, Freya Allen and Melanie Thomas. Apart from Kenfig where we ‘only’ had 66 members running, our attendances were brilliant ranging from 88 at Rest Bay to a high of 101 at Sandy Bowl for the other events.

In terms of the Team results, Bridgend were out in force this year after having to play runners up to us in the past two years having dominated in the pre-COVID years. Bridgend won every fixture with our club 2nd in 6 events and 3rd in 1 event. We finished 2nd overall and ran Bridgend close in a few fixtures.

Our record of having the overall individual winner for 14 BCRL fixtures in a row came to an end at the start of the season at Sandy Bowl although Jake did win the remaining 6 fixtures so the streak is well under way again.

At the end of season presentation, our members walked away with a haul of age category trophies. Arwen Rees and Jake Tasker won their age categories, Freya Allen, Bethan Moor, Claire DB, Denise Bradley and Niki Puleio finishing second in their age categories, and Katie Plimmer finishing third in hers.

Another incredible season.  Every single person made a difference whether our first finisher or our final finisher. A huge thank you to everyone who ran, volunteered, organised and supported.

Club Trail Championship

This year saw the return of the club trail championship with a mixture of local parkruns, XC fixtures and a variety of races across South Wales and beyond. Some great competition throughout the series with the top 3 male and female places still being decided right up to the final month and could have potentially changed as late as the 28th December. I won’t spoil the surprise and put the final standings as these will be presented at the presentation night on the 1st March.

Club Training in 2024

The club continues to offer a variety of training sessions which continue to grow in numbers. On Monday’s we have our junior sessions which have continued to be a great success with the expansion of age groups and multiple members involved in the sessions. Tuesdays have continued with a mixture of effort and mile sessions. Wednesdays are now regularly combined sessions with what was Flyers and regular club training coming together often for effort sessions. We also have track once a month where many of the sessions have come together. Thursdays have continued back at our original home in the Ogmore Valley where several themed / celebratory runs have taken place this year. Then there’s been trail Sundays which are regularly providing something different. We’ve had a number of new Lirfs this year alongside our long standing cohort who keep us motivated and active throughout the year.

At the start of the year we had our latest Zero to Hero group. It was great to see so many Lirfs and other club members coming along to support these sessions. For the first time we had the graduation at Aberfields parkrun rather than Porthcawl which a huge turnout of Z2H graduates and longer standing members who made up most of the volunteering roles including lots of pacers on the day.

Other club activities in 2024

Presentation night saw a record breaking night for Jake Tasker as he took away 5 awards including the top prize of being voted Runners Runner. Jake became only the second member to win Runners Runner for a second time with the other being Nick Harris. The top 3 for the Runners Runner vote was rounded out by Jamie Verran after his incredible parkrun tourism records the previous year and former Runners Runner, Tammie Baker after another brilliant year of running. Despite the trophy haul for Jake, there were 29 different winners on the night with Ria Ross and Claire DB the only others to take away more than one award.

After being incredibly disappointed not have been accepted for this years Welsh Castles Relay, we were given a chance to participate at the eleventh hour. Massive kudos to Dawn Hopkins, Dai Kembo, Nicky Bennett and Niki Puleio who managed to sort out the tricky logistics of travel, accommodation and payments whilst I spent a couple of days trying to convince 20 people to commit to running a huge event at short notice. Somehow it all worked out. It was also brilliant to have 5 ladies in the team this year including Bethan starting us off on the first leg and Jo Jenkins finishing the event on stage 20. An incredible weekend of running with all 20 runners finishing within the cut off times and doing the club and themselves proud. It was just the one team for Rack Raid this year but it was again a fantastic performance by our runners. Well done to Bethan Moor, Sian Price, Sarah Davies, Jamie Verran and Niki Puleio who ran both Rack Raid and Welsh Castles just one week apart.

In October we saw the return of the Snowdonia Marathon weekend with over 20 OPR members and supporters travelling up to the event. Phoenix corner was back with plenty of reinforcements after taking off in the wind a couple of years ago! A huge thanks to Jo Pratt for organising the weekend and to her and Emily Harris for their hours spent setting up and manning Phoenix corner again. Also a special mention for Alun Wylde and family who were set up with their extensive sweet treats station at the Half Way point.

This year saw the introduction of the Team Competition. Liz Davis and Fiona Evans came up with the idea which saw members put their names forward to be involved and then get randomly assigned a team mate for the year. The idea was that the team mates would encourage and support each other to attend training sessions, BCRL events, XC, parkruns and volunteer as set out in the monthly challenges that Liz and Fiona posted. There was even fancy dress involved for one parkrun. It almost certainly had an effect on the number of different people and amount that members volunteered this year as well as bringing members together who otherwise may not have had much contact with each other. I think the verdict is that it has been a resounding success and will hopefully see even more involved in 2025 if Liz and Fiona choose to run it again.

Our X (Twitter), Instagram and Facebook pages continue to keep members up to date whilst this year we’ve seen the introduction of Spond for training, races and other information to be shared. I’ve continued the monthly blog posts during the year with a few more to be published soon. Pippa and I have posted almost 5,000 individual results throughout the year with the master excel file I keep now having over 38,000 results.

A huge well done to every member who has participated in training, races, volunteered or simply encouraged others this year.