With warnings of incoming Hurricane Bertha, there was a certain calm before the storm on what was a glorious morning here at Montacute today, where we had a bumper turnout of 153 runners, including 32 first timers and in what proved ideal running conditions, a cracking 42 new Personal Bests.
In the run, parkrun tourist Ben Fairhall made the most of his trip down from his Milton Keynes stomping ground, and the Hilly Fields parkrun, to see family as he cruised round in a new course record time of 17m10 – poor old Jason Scott, ran a new PB of 18m13 but was still second (as he was the last time the course record went too!). Lee Cunningham finished third over the line in 19m10.
In the Ladies timings, Deb Glover of Wells City Harriers was first (10th overall) over the line in 21m06, ahead of Clare Martin, second in 22m26 (Clare has been first to finish on 3 previous occasions) and Lilly Hawkins, herself a previous first-placer on two occasions, was today third lady (in 28th overall) in 22m47.
It is always nice to see runners from other parkruns join us and we had a number of parkrun tourists with us today. Following in the wake of Ben Fairhall, Simon Morgan was over from Tiptree in Essex to finish in 11th place and we beneifittted from the Balloon Festival in Bristol as we had Joe and John Paeke come over from Ashton Court and Brad & Lisa Hayward and Mike Kent from Little Stoke parkrun – they even brought their own marshals as Nicki Kent manned the marshal point at George’s Dip assisted by Evelyn Hayward, our youngest marshal to date!
Lyndsey Hollands came to us from Taunton, Dominic Orgs from Eastbourne, and James Barber and Lynne Barber came from HQ – no, not Bushy Park, but the real “HQ” at Twickenham; hint; never ask a couple of runners at the start if they’ve done a parkrun before as you become embarrassed when you see later that they’re both members of the 100 Club!
Full results and a complete event history can be found on www.parkrun.org.uk/yeovilmontacute/results/latestresults/