Dartford parkrun 49 - eggplant

Anyone involved in parkrun will be well aware that there is a new milestone club in town. However, this one is not for running - it is for volunteering. To reach this milestone, a person must be credited as a volunteer on 25 different occasions.

Like its running counterparts, this club has a reward in the shape of its own milestone t-shirt and along with the rest of the clubs, they are now supplied by Tribesports. During the design process, parkrunners were given the opportunity to vote on a preferred colour for this new shirt, and as you can see from the photo below, the purple (eggplant) t-shirt won!

v25 [photo: richey]

In July 2015, the first batch of shirts became available to order, and as I had reached my 25 volunteer status way back in 2012, I was included in the first batch of recipients. I placed my order and the t-shirt arrived well in time for me to debut it at Dartford parkrun 49, which incidentally was also the last event of our first year.

In an attempt to try to be helpful, I have provided some feedback on my shirt below. For reference I am about 168cm tall and about 56kg. I usually buy clothes with a 34 inch chest or a 28-29 inch waist. So basically I'm very similar in stature and build to your typical long-distance runner (Mo, Haile and Bekele etc..).

Good: The quality of the shirt is superb, I love the colour and I am very happy and proud to wear the shirt. The ordering process was straight forward and delivery was speedy - Considering the amount of shirts being distributed, I was expecting a longer wait, so I really must give Wiggle's distribution system a big thumbs up. The neck, arms, shoulders and chest are the best fitting areas of the shirt, but go any lower and it's not quite the same story....

Bad: The waist area is a little baggy on me, which I was expecting considering the 'regular fit' description. However, it is the length of the garment that really disappointed me -  it is almost 5 inches longer than what I would consider the 'correct' length for me. I have to tuck it into my shorts to avoid looking like I'm wearing a dress (the shirt is strategically tucked in in the photo above).

I have read some comments from Tribesports advising people to downsize if they want to have a closer fit and take full advantage of the technical features. However, this was never an option for me as the small mens shirt (36-37 inch chest) was the smallest option available. I will of course continue to wear the (tucked in) shirt with pride, but I would urge the powers that be to look again at the sizing options. Considering the 'regular fit' design and the advice to downsize, I definitely think there needs to be an extra small option (not just in chest size, but also reflected in the length of the shirt - remember, not all of us are over 6ft. tall) in the mens range.

Please do not take this post as me being ungrateful and complaining about a free gift. I am just trying to give some open and honest feedback. The fit of a t-shirt (or clothing in general) is a very personal thing, and I appreciate that you can't please everybody. The people at either end of the size scale are always more likely to encounter problems of this nature and it's not the first time I've had this problem. If this was an ordinary run-of-the-mill running shirt that I had ordered and paid for, I would be returning it for a refund as I simply wouldn't wear an item of clothing with the aforementioned length issue. But of course, this is much more than an ordinary t-shirt.

Anyway, the subject of the post was Dartford parkrun event 49.

The day started with a playground workout which consisted of an circuit training style session. I used an app on my phone to set 30 second intervals with 30 seconds of rest between each period of work. I used the following system - 'upper / core / lower' with the upper alternating between pulling (biceps and back) and pushing (chest, shoulders and triceps) movements. There's a lot more to it than that, and I'll write about my playground workouts in more detail in a later post.

After setting up the course with Richey (ED), I took on the role of timekeeper again and it really was an exercise in finish funnel perfection. Both timekeepers and the tokens stayed in synch for the entire run. There was no funny business in the finish funnel (unlike the previous week) and the results were expertly processed while I spent a good deal of time having a good ol' chin-wag with a fellow parkrun tourist.

Dartford parkrun 46 - no pressure

I was back on the stopwatch for Dartford parkrun 46. A role I've now done twice and I must say that I really love it. All it takes is the ability to press two buttons - one to start the timer and one to register a time for each runner as they cross the finish line at the end of their run. However, it does require the ability to stay focussed on the incoming runners and also to not get too caught up in any of the post-run conversations.

that must be my concentrating face [photo: ann langdon]

It is described as one of the high pressure roles and this became apparent when my co-timer's stopwatch didn't properly register one of the runners. That meant that I had the solitary 100% stopwatch record in my hands and couldn't afford any slip-ups! In the end it worked out absolutely fine and everyone was accounted for.

timekeeping, balancing and listening [photo: ann langdon]

One of the most memorable moments was when eight runners all hurtled into the finish funnel within the space of four seconds - I managed to click fast enough to register three of them with exactly the same time. I imagine that this kind of situation lasts for minutes over at some of the busier venues (maybe I'll step up my game and volunteer as timekeeper at one of them one day).

You may notice the lack of a hi-vis vest in the photo. There's a simple explanation - We had so many volunteers that we ran out (and I'm not sure where my personalised one is at the moment). Which I guess is quite a nice position to be in and I'm certainly not complaining.

Riddlesdown parkrun sixty-nine

The main goal of September 2012 was to try out a few more parkrun venues and over the first four weekends I did just that by running at Brighton & Hove, Hilly Fields, Orpington, and Eastbourne before finally returning to Riddlesdown where I volunteered as half-way timer and event reporter.

It was the second time that I had been the half-way timer at Riddlesdown parkrun. It is incredibly simple and there is no way you can do it wrong... unless your name is steve (that's me). I managed to call out everyone's half-way times correctly until the last few runners came along and then I screwed it up, but I noticed immediately and corrected my mistake. However, they weren't too happy because they thought they were a minute faster than they were and then when I corrected my error I saw their faces fill with disappointment.

While I was screwing up the halfway timing, Mrs7t was running the event and in the end ran her fastest time of 2012!

Once the run had finished I had to get on with the report writing. At first it was just a mass of stats but as the hours went by I managed to add in a few personal touches and by the Monday it was ready to send to the event director.

Riddlesdown parkrun fifty-eight (anniversary event)

After a week out of the country, we returned to Riddlesdown for the first year anniversary celebration event. Now that my parkrun streak has been broken, we have decided to mix things up a bit. So, at this event I volunteered and kept the baby with me, which left Mrs7t free to run.

Firstly it was wet. Very wet. There were lots of big puddles and parts of the course almost had to be reclassified as lakes. Fortunately the Gibsons brought along a pair of wellies for me to use - Thank you!

Mrs7t prepared herself to run while I collected the stopwatch from Nicki so I could fulfill my role as halfway timer - a role I have been keen to try for a number of months.

It made a change to view the event from a different point of view. Usually when the run director calls out 'timers, are you ready?' I am just standing in the crowd waiting to be sent on my way, but today I had to confirm if I was ready - I was!

Halfway timer is a nice introduction into the world of the parkrun timer team. Out of the three roles - the other two being THE timer and backup timer - the halfway timer carries the least pressure as if you make a mistake the actual finish times are unaffected!

I made my way to the half-way point and about a minute before the first runners were due to come past, the Riddlesdown deer put in appearance. It was leaping through the long grass, it then crossed the path and leaped off into the distance.

About 9 minutes after the start of the run the juicy part of my day's job began. Fortunately the runners were quite spaced out by the time they reached me and there were only a few occasions where I had to call out times in quick succession. 11 minutes later the last runner reached me and my job for the day was complete!

I then made my way to the finish line to wait for Mrs7t to arrive, and shortly after she did. Thus completing her 9th parkrun (and first of 2012) in 39:25.

With this being the first year anniversary celebration, there was an additional part to the event. For those of you that are unaware, each parkrun has its own male and female points competitions. So we all headed over to Warlingham School to eat some cake and to be part of the annual prize giving ceremony.

Nicki took centre stage and told us a little about how and why the event was first started, then she moved on to the presentations. There were certificates for the top three male and female juniors. Then the top volunteers were presented with some very special personalised volunteering vests - including one for Lime (Matilda, baby7t), she was a bit overwhelmed by the noise of us all clapping, so she wasn't keen to put it on at the time.

Then we moved on to the overall male and female points competitions' winners. It's not something that I have ever really mentioned on the blog before, but I won the male points competition.

The top five in each competition were awarded their own personalised certificates and the overall winners have the honour of keeping the winners' shield for the year before they are handed over to next year's winners. The winners also received their own personalised shield to keep for ever and ever!

After the presentations, the runners - lead by Ange, made a few presentations to Nicki, Kaye and Morgan as a little thank you for everything they have done and continue to do for the event.

The points competition was never something I had originally set out to win. Initially I had just wanted to see how long I could maintain a streak at Riddlesdown. But of course, when you run every week you tend to build up a lot of points and when I realised that I was in with a chance I decided that I might as well stick with it until the end of the points year.

Now that the year is over I am taking a break to try to get over the last little niggly bit of my injury. When I resume running I'd like to go back to my original plan, which was to spend more time running at different parkrun venues. Although now that we have become such a big part of Riddlesdown parkrun that original plan isn't quite as appealing.

Here is a photo of the shields, at the end of the year the large one will be handed over to the winner of the 2012-13 points competition. The small one is the one I keep.