Members of the Run Wales registered Trelai, 5k Your Way, Move Against Cancer group received our Social Running Celebration Relay baton after its adventures with BRF Running Club this week, and both groups enjoyed running and volunteering together at Trelai Park parkrun.
The Celebration relay provides all Run Wales registered groups with a tremendous opportunity to showcase their group, sharing information about their activities and encouraging more people to participate in social running outside of their regular weekly parkrun. We are encouraging groups to support their local parkrun by offering to volunteer as well as run, jog or walk at the relay events.
30/47: Celebration Relay Run Report – Trelai Park parkrun
Although the Trelai, 5k Your Way group only hold official events at Trelai Park parkrun on the last Saturday of every month, we are delighted to support them as a Run Wales registered social running group, and are hugely grateful that they came to participate in the celebration relay this week and share their experience. This is what they had to say:
It was a bright and sunny morning, beautiful conditions for a walk or run at Trelai Park parkrun. As well as being Easter Saturday, it was the day Run Wales social running celebration baton relay visited Trelai Park parkrun.
The baton was collected from Grangemoor parkrun last weekend and brought to Trelai Park by members of BRF Running Club, where it was handed over to ambassadors Lucy and Rachel from Trelai, 5k Your Way, Move Against Cancer group.
5k Your Way is a community-based initiative, which supports and encourages anyone affected by cancer to exercise. They meet on the last Saturday of every month at Trelai Park parkrun. The group launched in January 23 and were delighted to be involved in the celebration relay today.
47 people took part in the parkrun, with representatives of 14 different clubs. There were 16 first timers, including Julie who was running her very first parkrun – welcome to the parkrun family Julie. There were 7 new personal bests, well done to you all and Carol celebrated her 50th parkrun, congratulations Carol. It was lovely to see Helen, a female runner as the first finisher, well done Helen.
Runners from Trelai, 5k Your Way and BRF Running Club ran together around the 3 lap course, passing the baton amongst themselves. Luckily, the infamous slimy bank was not too slimy today.
After 2 laps of the course, the baton was passed to tail walker Rachel, for the final lap. Rachel is not only an ambassador for 5k Your Way, but also the founder of Trelai Park parkrun, and it is thanks to Rachel that we have the opportunity to run and walk around this beautiful course. Many thanks to run director Sarah and the 18 volunteers who made today’s event possible.
Thanks to Kay Rogers, a Run Leader with BRF Running Club, for this run report contribution:
Another Saturday and it’s our favourite day of the week-parkrunday 😁. This week we are going to one of our closest parkruns in Trelai Park, a mere 20 minute journey from Barry.
This is a parkrun that I have run twice before but for quite a few of us ladies and one man they had not done it before. We had an important job to do today and that was to take ‘Bryn the Baton’ to his next destination of Trelai Park parkrun.
For those of you that are not sure of what is going on-there is a baton, (nicknamed Bryn by Vale Runners, one of the other running clubs in Barry), that has been travelling around all the Welsh parkruns and promoting the social running groups that we have here, and he started his journey in July 2022 at Nova Prestatyn parkrun and will finish later this year at Cardiff parkrun.
We are highly honoured to be allowed to take part, and 4 of our ladies attended Grangemoor parkrun last week where they collected Bryn. He has been a busy baton joining in all our running sessions on Monday at 6pm, Tuesday at 9.30, Thursday at 6pm and Friday at 9.30. Saturday morning was his last day with us and the sun was shining when 10 of us left Barry to go to Trelai.
Jacqueline, our LIRF in training, was volunteering, her first time barcode scanning and the rest of us were running with Diane Hitchcock, one of our Run Leader’s, coming back from her hip replacement operation park walking at the rear.
It was a perfect day for it and we met up with Sarah Pryor, the RD, and she immediately asked for photos of us with the baton. She was so chuffed that Bryn had made the journey and he would be handed over at this parkrun.
She introduced me to Lucy Gordon, who was the lady that set up one of Wales’s newest running groups Trelai, 5k Your Way, Move Against Cancer only in January this year. She would be collecting Bryn and another of her member’s would be taking him onto Llanishen next week for the next running club to collect him.
Both ourselves and 5KYW decided we would run Trelai parkrun together so we could pass Bryn around. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and ended up with the tail runner for the last lap of the three lap flat course.
I ran the whole of the parkrun in the company of Lucy from 5KYW, where we chatted for the whole time and somehow I smashed my Trelai PB too! His job was not quite finished as we needed lots of photos of Bryn before we would sadly let him go.
Trelai is a very friendly parkrun and all the volunteers are lovely and welcoming. The 5K Your Way, Move Against Cancer group attend Trelai Park parkrun on the last Saturday of each month and I am sure BRF (Beyond Running Fitness) Running Club will be coming back to run with them again in the near future.
Here are the statistics for today we had 47 people taking part in Trelai parkrun today, up on the 18 that attended last week, 16 were first timers, 7 pbs, 14 different clubs and 18 volunteers.
Today we had a lady first over the line with a time of 19.56, who was Helen Oliver from Les Croupiers Running Club and she narrowly missed the women’s record of 19.31 set by Louise Flynn on 10/09/22 in event 53.
The first man was second in a time of 20.35-Roddy Stark and a new pb. The current men’s record lies with David John Williams in a time of 16.46 on 23/7/22 event 46.
There was a milestone of a 50th parkrun for Carolyn Lewis today and a very first parkrun for Julie Godfrey, hopefully we will see you very soon for parkrun number 2.
This parkrun was very popular with our canine friends today and the running stats for the dogs is as follows: A photo finish for 1st placed Bear and Elwood, 3rd Ellie, 4th Oz, 5th Honey and 6th Poppy.
Today’s full results and a complete event history can be found on the Trelai Park parkrun Results Page. You will also find a link here to volunteer at the event!
Trelai Park parkrun started on 7th March 2020. Since then 1,810 participants have completed 3,914 parkruns covering a total distance of 19,570 km, including 623 new Personal Bests. A total of 261 individuals have volunteered 1,256 times.
Trelai 5k Your Way ambassador Lucy will now take the Run Wales celebration baton on to Llanishen Park parkrun next weekend, where members of Moti Albany Road will help the celebration continue it’s journey around Wales.
The Run Wales team would love to hear from any other social running groups in the area or anyone who is interested in establishing a new group.
Take a look at our Relay HQ to see how your social running group can take part!