Happy 8th birthday!

Yep, ANOTHER lockdown birthday, as many of us will know only too well. It was almost too good to be true, that we would all be able to celebrate by getting back together again in the park for an actual parkrun. But as we have all come to know only too acutely it was a lot easier to stop parkrun than it was to restart it all. 

Landowner permissions are, as at lunchtime today, at 450/589 (76%) with half of the London ones having been granted now. Let’s hope they continue throughout this week! 

There’s a nice visual map that shows the spread:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=17e0FR0apn4SMESGkL7Jhf1VvGOxkyHKi&ll=52.5800340350176%2C-0.8667207499073646&z=6

Then all we need to worry about is whether the government carry out step 4 of the unlock process as some landowners seem to have provided their permission based on that (which is not what HQ wanted as parkruns have been able to come back since 29th March).

So, watch out for an announcement on Friday 11th June from parkrun HQ about whether we have reached critical mass (depends on percentage and spread of open events). AND also what the government will say on Monday 14th June about step 4. 

Phew, talk about jumping through hoops!!

Another couple of milestones you may not have seen:

– The number of parkrun registrations has now surpassed 7 million! In Newark we’ve had 56 new registrations since our last birthday with 11 in the last month alone. 

– The number of people that have walked/run a (not)parkrun who have yet to participate in an actual parkrun event has reached 10,000. We know that some of those have been logging them against against Newark so it’ll be great catching up with them when we get back to it. 

As a core team we are meeting this week to go through a few final things just to make sure that we are as ready as can be. We already have loads of new pink hi-viz vests to restart with and Bob White has set up a holiday spreadsheet to ensure that we have adequate RD cover over the summer months. 

Many thanks to those who sent us a selfie over the weekend wishing everyone a happy birthday, not quite enough for a full on collage on last years scale but we know enthusiasm is well past the waning point now.  

(not)parkrun report

This week we saw 21 parkrunners logging a total of 41 (not)parkruns between them.

Just one PB this week from Matt Lee as he storms in with a time of 23:49 beating his overall parkrun PB by 30 seconds!

Well done all, keep up the good work and get ready for our return.

Here’s the full report:

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/newark/results/notparkrun/?date=2021-06-06

Hang in there,

Brian.