Vegan is a state of kind, and 300 kind, wonderful vegans were scanned at Bicester parkrun.
You may have seen we have been all over various parkrun stat groups this weekend about getting such huge numbers out, a couple of poor comments but pleasingly overall far more kudos for Vegan Runners and of course for the excellent team at Bicester parkrun.
Repeating the stats you may have already seen, we currently have exactly 300 Vegan Runners listed in the consolidated Club list.
There are still 44 Unknowns, quite high, including a run of 10 at numbers 651-660, so it’s possible these numbers may change as the week goes on.
682 finishers, previous best was 389 at Bicester on NYD 2019, so 293 more than that, and with 235 last week, that’s 427 more so interesting to speculate exactly how many Vegans were actually there!
For the first time ever Bicester parkrun found themselves in the top 10 biggest parkruns in the U.K, 682 puts them as 5th biggest this week!
The photo call was amazing, as you can see, now our main photo, it was taken at 8.40, so some will have missed it.
Bicester parkrun were extremely welcoming to us, I’m not sure anyone saw these numbers coming. I had thought 200, but didn’t want to put it out there in case we missed it, so 300 was off the scale, tough for the course, tough for volunteers, but everyone, runners and volunteers took it in their stride and were patient with a few bottlenecks on the course and also when the tokens ran out.
There were 44 volunteers at Bicester, many were VR’s, just a brilliant morning. I always go back and clap everyone in after I’ve finished, which was a great chance to see so many friends coming in about 100mtrs before the finish.
I had hobbled round on a fat ankle in about 22 mins, but no excuses it was wonderful to see so many young VR’s running in front of me, Sebby usually finishes ahead of me even when I’m fit and Tommy Kirk and Oliver Wade were both ahead of me.
It was fabulous to chat to Oliver after the run, he has just turned 15 and solo reps at Berkeley Green every week, so like all of us seeing green and black everywhere was quite a change!
I put up the junior runners photo from the local junior run, they are obviously the future and great for them to see other younger VR’s and make new friends. We had 4 VR’s in the junior results although looks like more may have run.
Congrats to Sebby Travers/Ryan Travers, Tommy Kirk/Lydia Kirk, Theo Deacon/Olivia Deacon, Felix Wilson/Daniel Wilson, all finishing in the top 7 out of 49 at junior parkrun!!
A few stats from Bicester.
We had 5 of the top 6 finishers, congrats to :-
Elliot Palmer
Thomas Almond
Matthew Du Cros
Matt Edmonds
Michael Slack
We also the 2nd female overall with Lesley Connors, who also had the top female age graded time.
Our top 5 females were :-
Lesley Connors
Mer Clare
Aurime Dovydaityte
Natalie Dawson
Laura Seaman
We also headed a few other lists, really impressive was Michael Burgess who headed the Age Grade list, his 81.5%, meant he was the only runner to achieve over 80% out of all 682 runners, and Jamie Kinghorn was also very high up the list in 3rd place with 78.8%.
The total parkrun list also had VR’s at the top, my 500+ was the only over 500 and Sharon Maria Boland and Louise Luna Galvin were 2 of only 3, to have recorded over 400 finishes.
This was of course all due to VCO, which seemed another superb success, 15,000 tickets sold, the Vegan Runner stand looked to be busy signing up whenever I walked past, Darren Comeau putting in long stints on both Saturday and Sunday.
We saw so many VR hoodies and tops walking around, apologies to anyone in a VR top who I just randomly started talking to, it was great to meet you all.
I hope you all had a fabulous time, Romesh was superb, Sam Ryder too, definitely worth waiting for and not getting home till 2 a.m!
It was lovely to see albeit briefly some old friends, make some new friends, my only frustration was seeing friends names in the results and not bumping into them, but good to know you were all there 
Same again next year?
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