parkrun Sweden on tour, part 1: Cardiff

Though I have been away from Hagaparken this week, I still had my parkrun fix, but this time in Cardiff, Wales. I first ran in Cardiff back in 2009 when there were around 50 runners, pretty similar to the numbers that we have had in Haga in recent weeks. Times have changed though, and this time there was almost 750 runners, a massive number for the Easter weekend. In fact worldwide it was a huge attendance record with the very first time over 220,000 runners in a single weekend. A million run performances in the month of April is possible, amazing!
 
I actually ran first this time, and loved the brilliant volunteers encouraging the runners. And in a great bit of sportsmanship, the guy that I was running with was really trying to help me stick with him in that difficult last km, encouraging me, ‘you can do it’ and ‘I’m tired too!’. Just what you’d expect at parkrun – remember it’s not a race!
 
Then once I arrived at the finish I helped out with the barcode scanning, together with 4 other fantastic volunteers. The trickle of runners passing through the finish funnel started to increase as we reached the 20 minute mark, and turned into a flow over the next 15 minutes as hundreds of runners came over the line. All shapes of ages, sizes, speeds, ethnicity and clothing! And a large number of first-timers too. The whole event is run with clinical efficiency, as you might expect for an event of this size. An amazing thing for the local community to enjoy every week.
 
This coming Saturday I will be at Southwark parkrun, where there is a special pre-London marathon themed parkrun! Sounds great, and I look forward to taking a few photos from that event!
 
Hope that the weather improves back in Sweden so that all events can go ahead as planned this week!
 
Happy parkrunning!
 
Deri Thomas
Country Manager
parkrun Sweden
A24286