Dartford parkrun 45 - chalking, photographing (badly) and scanning

Event 45 marked another volunteering-only parkrunday for me and after the previous week's session on the timer, this week I returned to something a bit more familar - barcode scanning. Half-way through scanning, my daughter decided that she would like to scan a few barcodes so I handed the opticon barcode scanner over to her for the rest of the stint.

photograph the photographer [photo: gary bignell]

Before that, I had a frustrating session as photographer. I positioned myself over in the formal garden section of the park and tried to capture a few shots from an elevated position next to the library. I hadn't been using the DSLR camera enough in recent times and the lack of familiarity with the settings meant that I produced some pretty poor results. I'm just glad that there were also some decent photographers out there.

chalking [photos: 7t]

I continued the theme of writing motivational messages in chalk around the course and they seem to have been well received by the runners. I've been trying to avoid repeating the same ones week in, week out so for this event I went with 'Good Morning', 'Looking as fresh as a daisy' and 'give it some welly', as well as the standard 'Welcome to Dartford parkrun' message near the start-finish area.

it must run in the family [photo: 7t]

That was all after arriving at 7.10am and doing a half-decent circuit training session with Adam (Richey was also there and filmed us doing some walking lunges which wasn't embarrassing at all). The workout consisted of focussing on three broad areas - upper body, core, and lower body.

We worked our way through the sets and varied the exact exercise each time around. For example, with the upper body, we alternated between pushing and pulling movements each time a new set came around. It was great fun, although the following morning my glutes were strongly disagreeing with that description!

Dartford parkrun 11 - photographer, scanner and the end of my current parkrun(ning) streak

I may or may not have mentioned that I might possibly have an injury in my foot. Because I'm trying to be sensible, I decided not to run at today's Dartford parkrun. In order to ensure I didn't change my mind on the start line I did two things. Firstly I didn't wear my running gear. And secondly I left my barcode at home. If I hadn't done those two things I definitely would have (perhaps stupidly) lined up on the start line.

bokeh [photo:7t]

So instead of running, I brought my camera along and acted as one of the official photographers. My camera skills are usually just about ok but I am really out of practice when it comes to DLSR photography so I had a few lighting and so shutter speed issues. Anyhow snapping away came a (close?) second to running at the event. My photos can be found on flickr (here).

richey briefing the volunteers [photo:7t]

Because my official role was barcode scanner (Richey asked if I wanted to be RD but nerves got the better of me and I declined) I had to get back over to the start area after about 16 minutes, so I headed over where I had a barcode scanning debutant as my scanning partner. Judging by the results, I think we did a pretty good job and there were no obvious mistakes.

dartford parkrun eleven [photo:7t]

Part way through the scanning I went off to check on a runner that had not been feeling well post run. So I handed over my scanner to my wife, who in turn ended up handing it over to my daughter. So the whole Stockwell clan had turns at scanning today.

volunteer roster [photo:7t]

Once I returned to the scanning area there was no way that my daughter was going to give the barcode scanner back to me so I continued to take some more photos while the remaining runners came through the finish line - these were mostly of the volunteers who sometimes don't make it into the photo albums.

it's not the first time she's done some barcode scanning [photo:7t]

So overall it was a fantastic day because it included parkrun. It was also international parkrun day 2014 and also parkrun's 10th birthday where Bushy parkrun got a turnout of 1705. However for me it meant the end of my latest parkrun(ning) streak which stands at 76 consecutive events. I love streaks and I hate it when they end, especially when it's not my choice to end them! However it's just a run and I'm sure there are much more important things to spend time fretting over.

one of the central park flags [photo:7t]

To end on a positive - during the last week one of our runners/ volunteers managed to sort out the locks on our storage box so from now on I will no longer have to run through the streets of Dartford carrying or wheeling the stanchions along with me. I can simply jog over to the park, open the box and then set up the course. I gather Richey is pretty chuffed too - who knows, we may even start having pre-parkrun jogs over to the park together in future!

Riddlesdown parkrun fifty-nine

I continued my rest period this week (from running at least*) and volunteered at Riddlesdown again.

This week I was down as the official photographer. I own an SLR and I have a pretty good understanding of it on a basic level. So although I was slightly nervous that the photos would not be up to the usual standard, I was confident that I knew how to operate the camera.

The main downside to taking the photos is that you are potentially left with the huge task of editing over 200 photos. Cropping is easy, but I wanted to avoid having to adjust all of the colours too. So the night before the event, I set-up a mode on the camera that would hopefully produce some nice punchy images and save me from having to spend additional time correcting any colour issues.

On the day, I headed over to the start line with my knee-high assistant, who was sporting her bespoke volunteering vest for the first time!

There were a few outstanding presentations to be made, then the runners - including Mrs7t - were off. I headed over to the point where the trail section ends and found a nice position from where I could snap the runners during the first lap.

Once they had all passed through, I headed along the last 500 metre stretch of the course and caught the runners for a second series of photos as they were nearing the end. The good thing about this route is that as you move along you get a variation of shots instead of the same background for every single runner.

Eventually we arrived at the finish line and waited for Mrs7t to appear After about 40 minutes we saw her in the distance. She had spent the whole run with Jenny, and the two of them had spent most of the time chatting - hence the finish time of 45 minutes!

In order to save some time later in the day, I had brought my laptop so I could start the cropping process whilst we were in the pub. I managed to get about half of the photos ready for upload before we had to leave. The other half were finished on Sunday morning.

My set of photos can be found on the Riddlesdown parkrun flickr page.

Something that makes me smile.. I am leading the male points table again. This will be the last week that I do in this year's contest.

I'll be volunteering again next week. Which role I take on is still to be confirmed, but in order to fit in with the anti-streak I can not be the photographer again. Registration is a strong possibility.

* I went out for 20 minutes (5km) on the bike during the week.

The third Riddlesdown parkrun

Today we went to Riddlesdown parkrun again, this was event number 3.

This week there were a few firsts.

• My wife (Dani) was the official photographer ( alimelessordinary )
  
• My friend (Danny) ran his first parkrun
• The weather forecast was for heavy rain (The first two events had glorious sunshine)
  

I had decided before the run that I wasn't going to race. I'm happy to report that I stuck to this and spent the entire parkrun alongside Danny, at a nice steady pace.

Me and Danny

Even though the forecast was for heavy rain all morning, we seemed to have a stroke of luck and when we arrived it was still dry. I was surprised to see a good turnout at the start line, in total there were 73 of us.

Nice and steady

We started near the back of the pack as we planned to have a fairly gentle run. I knew that we'd have a bit of congestion to deal with, but the good thing is that the congestion helped to keep our pace down. We decided to aim to finish in around 25 minutes.

Dani had set up her photography position at a point where she could capture runners at two different stages of the race, each time we passed her we tried to put in a nice variation of poses for the camera!

See what happens when you point a camera at people!

I promised that I'd throw in an aeroplane so......

The aeroplane (and something else!!)

At the half-way point the timer called out our 2.5km split time - 12:30 - Perfect timing for a 25 minute finish!!

Focused.

As we were feeling quite good we decided to pick up the pace slightly in the second half. When we reached the last 500 metres we picked out a runner in front of us and tried to catch him. Unfortunately he had a similar burst of pace and we didn't quite manage to catch up with him, but it was a fun thing to do! We did manage to pass a struggling runner just before the finish line, he looked like he may have picked up an injury - I hope he is ok.

Around we go!

We crossed the finish line in 22nd and 23rd positions at 24:20 and 24:21. It worked out that we somehow managed to finish 1st and 2nd in our age category. Although when you look at the total number of runners in our age group you can see why! (there were only 3 in total!). Incidentally, the runner we passed just before the finish line was the third person in our age category.

After we had crossed the line we decided that it would be fun to do one more lap! As always in these situations this is when something goes wrong. Remember the rain that was forecast? Well, it came down during this lap!

That extra lap sounded like a good idea at the time!

We finally met up with Dani and Matilda, all four of us soaked through (although Matilda wasn't really wet as she had been snuggled inside her bEco baby carrier the whole time).

The official photographer and the Baba!

The GPS tracking showed that in total we had run 7.6km ( summary / map )

Riddlesdown 3 Official results page - Here
Riddlesdown Flickr page - Here

Overall, it was really enjoyable again. Looking through the results I noticed that I could have come in second or third place if I had gone out at my full 5k race pace. But it's not always about the finishing position. This weekend was all about enjoying the parkrun without having the pressure of putting in the fastest possible time. Dani managed to do a splendid job at photographing the event, espeically as she was multitasking (photographing / entertaining Matilda / trying to keep dry!). All she has left to do is trawl through two full 1 gigabyte memory cards to find all the best ones and upload them!

7t. (Steve)

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Riddlesdown parkrun official photographer

This Saturday (16 July) my wife will be the official photographer of the third Riddlesdown parkrun. She'll be wearing our daughter while taking the photos so you'll easily spot her/them.



If you're running be sure to to look like you're enjoying yourself or even do a bit of freestyling (eg: the aeroplane) as you approach her!

I'll be running but unless I have a moment of madness, not racing ( see here ). I'm hoping to keep the time to around 25 minutes but I can already feel my legs twitching like they want to race.

I imagine I'll be writing all about it soon so stay tuned!

7t.