23 September 2017
In our house it wouldn’t be Saturday if it didn’t start with a trip to Southampton Common for parkrun. Southampton is the busiest parkrun on the South Coast with between seven hundred to a thousand or more runners each week. As October sees the thirteenth anniversary of the very first parkrun, I thought I’d take a look behind the scenes to see what goes on to make this fabulous free event happen every Saturday morning. Continue reading Behind the scenes at Southampton parkrun
8 July 2017
This morning it was quite bizarre to rock up at parkrun and find the Run Directors were actually the 118 twins complete with moustaches. Ok, so Rob has usually got some kind of facial hair going on but I’ve never seen Kim with a moustache before. Oddly, it kind of suited her. The reason for all this frivolity was a birthday. Southampton parkrun turned five years old this morning and everyone was in the mood to celebrate. The theme was heroes, obviously. Continue reading Happy 5th Birthday Southampton parkrun
21 May 2016
Hundreds of people turn out for parkrun at Southampton Common every Saturday morning. They run their 5k and they go home feeling virtuous, quite rightly so. It takes a lot to get out of bed early at the weekend and run around an often cold, wet, muddy common after all. Most probably don’t realise all the work that goes on behind the scenes to make their run possible though. This week Commando was volunteering to help set up. For him this is a regular thing, he does it a few times a year. Some amazing people do it every week though. They are the real parkrun heroes! Continue reading Parkrun behind the scenes
31 January 2016
When I said I’d go up to the Common with Commando on Sunday morning for a photo shoot I didn’t expect rain and cold. We were amomgst the first there and we stood around shivering and chatting as other people slowly began to arrive. The photo shoot was for the runners who’d volunteered as pacers for the Southampton Half Marathon. There’d be a practice run around part of the course at the end of it. Continue reading Common photos, gallows, a well and some extraordinary people