Junior Park Run arrives at Jubilee Park Waterlooville

Dominic, one of our sons, has recently taken an interest in running. Maybe he’s been inspired by us; we have both completed the C25K (couch to 5k) running app which basically trains absolute non-runners to running 5 km in just 8 weeks.

This enthusiasm has coincided nicely with a new local junior parkrun which started at Jubilee Park this Sunday. For those whose don’t know, Parkrun is free, weekly 5km timed runs which take place all over the world. Due to it’s sheer popularity, Junior-only, 2k runs have started to appear.

The parkrun is totally free; all you have to do is register on-line before your first run, then it provides you with your unique barcode that you print and take with you to the run and this records your race time.

We all arrived just before 9am and a fair number of people were gathered near the starting line; there were plenty of helpful and very friendly volunteers with their bright hi-vis jackets on. Dominic saw a few friendly faces from his school and was eager to start. We’d registered on-line a few days before and printed out Dominic’s bar code which is used to record the finishing race position and time. After a de-briefing by one of the volunteers, all the children took part in a 2 minute warm up, and they were off!

Most of the children ran the course on their own and some ran with their parents. The course was basically 2 1/2 laps of Jubilee park – most of the course was on pathway; so will be fine in wet weather! Volunteers and parents cheered the children as they went round – there was lots of encouragement and general friendliness.

Then, before long the first runners were at the finish line – just over 9 minutes for the quickest. Dominic came a respectable 14 minutes and really enjoyed himself. In all 40 children took part and it was a non-competitive, fun and friendly start to a Saturday morning. We’ll be back again next week and perhaps we’ll run it as a whole family…watch this space!