IT WAS another dry morning for Gloucester’s 193rd parkrun last Saturday for the 78 walkers and runners who completed the 5 kilometre course around Gloucester District Park. There was a large contingent from Taree, who arrived by train early in the morning, climbed the Bucketts, then joined the locals at the parkrun (apart from one of the group who chose to sit under a tree instead).

There were six people enjoying their first parkrun at Gloucester, including Angela Nicholson doing her 269th parkrun and Angela Fairclough and Sarah Rose doing their very first parkruns. Local Arthur Poynting completed his 50th parkrun last week but missed celebrating it – so we can note his 51st this week.

Charlie Coombes was the first male home in a time of 21.26, with visitor Lyn Ellis first female home in 28.04. There were 14 finishers with personal bests – it must have been the cooler weather.

It was a week for first timers in the volunteer roles. Tracy Wilson was taking on the job of timekeeper for the first time, ably supported by regular volunteer Rod Eckels who was handing out tokens. Dean Slight ran fast enough to complete the parkrun before taking on the role of scanning, also for the first time. He got the hang of it easily, even when someone tried to use their supermarket discount barcode instead of their parkrun one (and wondered why it wasn’t working!).

Amanda Dickson was tailwalker in her first volunteering role on only her third parkrun. Don Richardson sorted the tokens to make sure we had none missing this week (if anyone has token number 15 from last week, we would love it back, no questions asked). Thanks to all the volunteers for making this great community event happen.

By Carolyn DAVIES