Milestone Madness at Three Brooks Park Run

As a rugby fan, Saturday 14th March was recognised as ‘Super Saturday’ as the climax of the Six Nations. For Three Brooks parkrun, event number 84 was ‘Milestone Madness’ and also a very special Saturday. We started the day knowing we had a few big milestones, however they just kept coming and we had no less than 16 milestones to celebrate!

Alan Wilcox, Chair of North Bristol running group, has been participating in parkrun every weekend (other than a short intermission during Covid) since the first one started in Bristol at Ashton Court in 2011. On Saturday he achieved the official milestone of 700 park runs – incredible!  Tom Elliot and Lizzie Clark, fellow North Bristol Runners, chose to join Alan by celebrating their 100th parkrun! As is parkrun tradition, Alan brought cake that was enjoyed by all the participants.

We were also joined by Paul Goodwin completing 200 park runs; and Jamie Walker, Angela Thorpe and Rose Dawson completing 300 park runs each and Deborah Williams completing her 400th parkrun!

There were official milestones for two juniors completing 10 park runs each and we also had two more runners complete their 100th parkrun – Juliet Sithole and John Rivers. John is one of the most regular runners at Three Brooks. Dave Sharratt Co-Event Director of Little Stoke Junior parkrun celebrated his 250th parkrun, this will earn him a milestone T Shirt. He brought his friends from the Bristol Vegan Runners with him to celebrate. Junior parkrun is for participants between the ages of 4 and 14 every Sunday morning at 9am and takes place at Little Stoke Park.

Saturday, being the second Saturday of the month, was also pacer week, where volunteers help other participants achieve a particular time. One of the volunteers this week was Charlie Johnson, volunteering with us for the very first time.

We also had one of our Run Directors, Tegan, volunteering for the 100th time! Parkrun only happens through the support of volunteers like Charlie and Tegan. If you would like to give it a go drop us an email at [email protected]

The icing on the cake on Saturday was that we were revisited by the Cameron family from Basingstoke who had visited us in January. Brian Cameron, who is in his late seventies, suffered a hamstring injury and was feeling despondent until he was supported by one of our park walkers Katie to walk the course. He was so impressed by the support offered in January, he came back on Saturday and brought cake, which we all enjoyed!  The family were impressed by our welcoming team of friendly volunteers of all ages. In the UK the first parkrun started at Bushy Park, Teddington in October 2004.

The Three Brooks parkrun started in July 2024. The event takes place every Saturday at 9am from the Duck pond, just register via https://www.parkrun.org.uk/register/ before attending your first event. There is a first timers briefing for all new attendees and visitors at 8:45.

Since we started, over 9,356 have participated either running, walking or volunteering. Don’t worry about being last – the tail walker is always the last to finish!

At Three Brooks we work closely with other community groups including North Bristol Running Group, Sole Sisters North Bristol, 1st Bradley Stoke Scouts and Bradley Stoke Benefice. We are supporting local children through Duke of Edinburgh volunteering (although we currently have a waiting list for this). We have recently recycled our old trainers rather than sending them to landfill and we also support vulnerable groups in our community.

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