parkrun – 13/12/2025

14 December 2025 - By Steven Alder

This week at Markshall Estate saw brand new and shiny RD Andrew Read taking on his new role as part of the core team. He was there nice and early to make sure it all went smoothly. To help with the smooth running of the parkrun he had a few volunteers from Witham RC joining him: Monty as the Funnel Manager, Angela Read as a Marshal, Lisa Leader as Tail Walker and Dave Holdich as Photographer! Well done all, you helped 231 parkrunners complete the course, including Damien Walsh (19:54), Ian Lucas (26:11), Mick Conroy (27:19), Emma Austin (35:53) and Naomi Emerick (46:43) with Lisa Leader (53:01) as Tail Walker.

Markshall Estate parkrun has also taken delivery of radios that were donated to them by Witham RC, which they were pleased to have to help marshals keep in touch with each other.

We had Witham RC represented over in various parkruns, including a few international locations. These included Amager Fælled (Denmark), Avery Hill, Highbury Fields, Oak Hill, Colchester Castle, Maldon Prom, Chelmsford Central, Hockley Woods, Milano Nord (Italy), Lochore Meadows, Markshall Estate,  Pirrama (Australia), Frank’s Farm and ARU Writtle.

Our international runners from this week (shockingly, none of which were Steven Alder) were Vicki Riley and Nicola Digby at Amager Fælled in 24:35 32:33 respectively, Nichola and Chris Beazeley at Milano Nord in 25:36 and 43:54 respectively and Steve Hookings in 25:56 at Pirrama. Steve has done 234 parkruns now, of which 233 were at Maldon Prom. This means that this is the first time he’s done a parkrun that isn’t Maldon Prom, and he did it in style by getting one done in Australia! Whilst both locations have water as part of the scenery, I would imagine they have very different views and weather!

Locally, we had Adam Hocken at Hockley Woods where he completed his 250th parkrun in 27:23. Welcome to the parkrun 250 club! Glen Waller (25:43) and Patrick Hinchliffe (37:39) went to visit Colchester Castle but over at Maldon Prom we had Adam Regan (26:03), Liz Prior (26:03), Amy Eyo (26:11) and Ian Cuthbert (30:53). Chelmsford Central saw Kevin Harper (23:46), Fiona Collins (29:02) and Ross Silverton (34:14). The new local at ARU Writtle, completing their second week, saw Andrew Smith (22:05), Jack Welch (22:43) and Lysia Jiggins (32:38).

Over visiting the capital, a few London locations saw our members this week, including Dawn Shilling (31:44) meeting a colleague at Highbury Fields, Steven Alder (29:56) carrying an extra 24.7kg of weight for 700m of the course at Avery Hill and Giles Sowerby (19:01) in second place at Oak Hill.

We had Geoffrey Reddin, another one of our parkrun uber-tourists from Witham RC, at another fairly new event Frank’s Farm. This was their 5th event and he completed it in 88th place in 25:25. This was his 228th different location – nice one! Further afield was Tony Wallen in Scotland visiting Lochore Meadows for the 13th time and completing it in 22:54 in 10th place. Meanwhile at the same location, Brigid Wallen was volunteering.

The full set of results on the parkrun website can be found here. If you complete parkrun and haven’t appeared here, you’ll need to add Witham RC as your club, which you can do here.

---

parkrun Challenge Trivia

Another challenge people like to go for is Stopwatch Bingo. This one doesn’t have to involve touring, it can be done at any parkrun location. This is where you complete a parkrun and only look at the seconds part of your result. The plan is to have completed a parkrun with every second, so xx:00 up to xx:59. You’ll need to do a minimum of 60 parkruns to do this challenge. It starts off easy getting a different second each week, but it gets harder to complete when you only have a few left to do!