It was a wet and windy start for most on this third parkrun event of October as Storm Babet continued to batter many parts of the UK with high winds, torrential rain and flooding. With numerous parkruns cancelled, Vegan Runners’ attendance was understandably lower this week than usual, yet we still had 729 VRs repping the green and black across the UK at 309 locations. 664 of us ran, walked, jeffed, skidded and slipped our way around the 5km courses and over 65 wonderful souls volunteered.
Meet ups were met at and in some cases hastily rearranged due to last minute event cancellations, including the Nottingham & Sheffield Vegan Runners meet-up at Brierley Forest parkrun which had to be postponed due to flooding, they managed to meet at Forest Rec, instead. Parkrun touristing takes effort and planning but it’s all worth it and pays dividends in terms of meeting other like-minded lovely Vegan Runners and getting to explore different locations. Thank you to Dave Sowerby-Williams for the photo of this week’s second biggest meetup at Queen’s parkrun, Glasgow, celebrating Richard Evans’ 250th parkrun 
. Dave and Phil travelled twelve hours by coach to get there! An inspiration to us all to get out and represent our wonderful Vegan Runners’ Club further afield. The biggest meetups this week took place at:
33 Eastville parkrun
12 Queen’s parkrun, Glasgow
11 Worcester parkrun
10 Forest Rec parkrun
9 Swansea Bay parkrun
8 St Albans parkrun
8 Hastings parkrun
7 Southsea parkrun
6 Finsbury parkrun
6 Poole parkrun
6 Preston Park parkrun, Brighton
6 Sheffield Castle parkrun
6 Cassiobury parkrun
6 Land’s End parkrun
Despite treacherous conditions, we managed a not-too-shabby average finish time of 29:51 – yet another sub-30! 
The incredible Lin Lacelles hit parkrun news this week as she is now the new course record holder for the “Age Grade” category at Groe parkrun. Lin finished the course with a time of 20:34 which places her age category at 91.73% – an absolutely incredible achievement! The course record had stood since Event 25, which was back on 7th September 2019 (91.12%). Congratulations, Lin 
Congratulations to these Vegan Runners who all came first in their gender position at their parkrun this week:
Elliot Collins 20:11
Claire Evans 25:38
Ben Parmar 20:06
Kelly Joanne Knight 20:57
Heather Travis 23:12
Catherine Charlton 21:53
Elly Maggs 22:32
Jo Fleming 21:21
Katie Louise Wright 20:31
Naomi Sutton 21:57
Scott Braunton 21:55
Kirsty Atkinson 25:44
Benjamin John Grant 18:52
Fiona Newman 21:29
Sophie Burnett 22:21
A nefarious nine of you landed on the noughty step this week:
19:00 Julian Harrison
26:00 Joe Brownen
27:00 Robert Franklin
29:00 Dan Coughlan
30:00 Victoria Barber
30:00 Grace Beswick
30:00 Paul Williams
35:00 Wendy Brigstock
43:00 Katie Wythe
Well done, noughties!
Ten Vegan Runners were handed a finish token with a multiple of fifty this week, 
s to:
50 Heather Jupp
50 Etwal Teja
50 Matthew Savory
50 Gonçalo Melo
100 Georgina Kilgour
100 Emma Gaut
150 Clare Pashby
200 Shana Banana Burchett
250 Shelley Harlock
300 Gemma Hodges
400 Lydia Burge
450 Justin Bowen
I’ve been benevolent and included the lovely Emma here, as despite officially coming in 101st position, she evidenced her 100 barcode with a photo!
There were thirty rep digit reppers this week, whoops and cheers to these resplendent representatives of our lovely club:
11 Darren Newman
11 Graham Clark
11 Pete Colwell
11 Steve Proudley
11 Steven Walsh
22 Charlotte Skipper
22 Jamie Heywood
22 Noel Williams
22 Tam Sanger
33 Jamie Cecil
33 Katrina Harling
33 Mark Myer
44 Clare Rubin
44 Edward Owen
44 Lysanne Broomfield
55 Mick Smith
88 David Murray
88 Saffy Walton
99 Alex Forrest
99 Claire Holt
99 Karen Page
99 Kathryn Lamb
99 Nicola Toogood
99 Richard Evans
99 Sarah Priestley
111 Davina Dawson
111 Emma Hunt
111 Teresa Caswell
222 Rebecca Hawes
444 Kathryn Smith
Not forgetting a mention for our speediest runners, our fastest ladies this week were:
20:31 Katie Louise Wright
20:34 Lin Lascelles
20:36 Lesley Connors
20:57 Kelly Joanne Knight
21:21 Jo Fleming
And our top five fastest men:
16:50 Jake Stephens
17:03 Philip Nind
17:30 Harry Pannell
17:42 Gareth Thomas
17:44 Gareth Pritchard
Well done everyone, great repping in the face of adverse weather conditions! You are making a difference. Just being seen in the black and green, getting people thinking and starting conversations, great first steps to inspiring change. Change for the animals, change for the planet, change for good. Have a great week!
The post Vegan Runners parkrun report 21.10.23 appeared first on Vegan Runners UK.
