Parkrun 162 - April Fools' Day

Good morning and welcome to parkrun (what number are we up to?)!

I am feeling a bit lazy this morning, so I thought I’d be a director instead of a runner. So lazy in fact, that I thought I’d oursource as many responsibilities as possible.

Please raise your hand if you are a regular parkrunner? Please raise your hand if you are a first timer or a visitor? Welcome! Regular parkrunners, can you please adopt a first timer or a visitor after the speech. You’ll have a few minutes to explain to them how our parkrun goes. You’ve heard it all before, so you know what to say.

OK, quick question. What’s the next major local running event on our calendar? Yes, it’s Conquer the Summit and is on next Sunday at 1000h (we get to sleep in for a change).

I have some good news and some bad news this morning. Which one would you like to hear first?

Well, the good news is that we have two hundredth parkruns to celebrate today. Can Carrie and Jackson please come up to the front? Let’s start in alphabetical order.

Like many of us Carrie started at parkrun as a way of getting into shape after giving birth to her third daugther. Like many of us she has run half marathons, full marathons and challenging trail runs all over the country. Like many of us she has 77 pairs of running shoes at home. Like many of us she’s looking for just the right shoes to help her break the 21 minute barrier. In the spirit of outsourcing: Jackson, do you have any questions for Carrie? I would like to know, why did you run with a pumpkin once?

Jackson! Jackson is a multi-talented young man. He can play the piano, he’s a black belt in karate and he’s one of our fastest runners. He’s been running here since our third parkrun when he was just 10 years old. He has a friendly rivalry going with his dad and at the moment Andrew just has the better of him by 23 seconds. Carrie, do you have any questions for Jackson? I have one, how many pairs of running shoes do you have? How many do you need to catch your dad?

Both Carrie and Jackson share a love for running and a love for our parkrun community.

Congratulations to you both!

Jackson, can you please help me hand out the Club 10 certificates? We have quite a few juniors who have completed 10 parkruns and we’d like to acknowledge them with a Club 10 certificate. You call them out and I’ll hand them out.

So, let’s thank out volunteers without who this event would not be possible. Today we have Maureen on stopwatch, Mignon on tokens, Garry is on photos, Karen and Kylie are scanning and sorting, Jonathan is our tail runner and Sharlene is the mystery halfway flag elf.

Now, the bad news is that we don’t really need Maureen on stopwatch, because (this is really embarassing) I forgot the stopwatch at home. Yes, I am sorry it happens to the best of us. You just talk amongst yourselves for 10 minutes and I’ll go back home to get it. I didn’t really know how you were going to handle the bad news: would I have a lynch mob after me or would we have to use the defibrillator on Ros at this stage and I don’t really know how to break it to you that this is my lame attempt at an April Fool’s Day joke. So I better just calmly take the stopwatch out of my pocket and hand it over to Maureen.

Here you go Maureen, take it away!

Happy running!