Southsea gearing up for fancy birthday parkrun

Southsea parkrun takes place every Saturday at 9am

Run director Grant Day and his team of volunteers welcomed all the parkrunners before the event.

He also gave notice of the upcoming occasion of parkrun’s 12th birthday and Southsea parkrun’s third birthday.

As well as the usual celebration cakes and balloons there is set to be a fancy dress run.

See the Southsea parkrun facebook page for details.

The weather was good on Saturday with only a light breeze for the runners to tackle on the return leg of the 5k.

In total 292 runners completed the 5k which starts at Speakers’ Corner, near Rocksbys Restaurant.

Southsea welcomed 36 first timers and 46 runners recorded new personal bests.

Anthony Salt completed his 100th parkrun and celebrated with a personal best time of 23.21.

Gabrielle Yates ran her 50th parkrun.

Paul Corney, who is a member of Hillingdon Triathletes, finished first with a new personal best of 17min 47sec.

Emma Jolley was first lady in 19.24.

Clare Pitts-Tucker finished second lady as she set a new personal best time of 22.20.

Lots of clubs were represented including Portsmouth Joggers, City of Portsmouth, Stubbington Green Runners and Lordshill Road Runners.

There was a new personal best for Craig Winter who clocked a good time of 18.22 with a strong run.

First timer Mary Rees (VW60-64) was graded the highest age score last week of 88.68 per cent for the time 22.31 (54th overall).

Southsea parkrun started on October 5, 2013, and since then 6,344 different runners, including participants from 409 athletics clubs, have completed 36,299 runs, covering a total distance of 181,495k.