Big turnout for the last Telford Park Run of 2022 as 10-year-old reaches major milestone

Among the 358 people who turned out in the pouring rain for the 5Km run - and walk - were newbies keen to make an early start on their new year resolutions as well as plenty of old hands.

Running runs in the family for the Uptons of Broseley who celebrated 10-year old Daniel's 100th with a celebratory balloon.

Mum Claire, dad Craig and sister Jessie, 13, are also regular runners at the park run closest to their home.

"We all run as a family most weeks," said Claire. "It is a bit of everything for us, fitness as well as it being a real family community. We will be doing the New Year's Day run here too, and we did the park runs on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day too!"

Young Daniel has just joined Telford Athletics Club and last June he completed a charity run in memory of a teacher and Claire added: "He wants to do the London Marathon, too!"

Daniel's balloon wasn't the only one in sight at the New Year's Eve park run. Mike Sprason, known among Telford Parkrunners as "Magic Mike" was there as a volunteer for the 200th time. There were also about 25 volunteers there too. People are also welcome to spectate.

Event director Kim Fawke said: "We gave Mike some balloons so that he could get some high fives from the runners on their way round, and hoped he didn't float away!"

Kim said the turnout was good given the deluge at Telford Town Park in the morning.

"The forecast said 'light rain' but I think the forecast was wrong," she said. "If that was light rain I wouldn't like to see heavy rain."

Kim said among the people who turned out were experienced parkrunners, a man with a prosthetic leg and plenty of new so-called tail walkers.

"The new walkers did well to start out on their New Year's resolutions a day early especially given the conditions," she said.

"New Year's Day is normally our highest attendance of the year, it will be interesting to see how many people we get tomorrow. It will depend on how many have thick heads!"

Telford Park Run has held 407 events since it started and has seen more than 151,000 course finishes with 25,558 personal bests being set and an average finishing time of just over 30 minutes.

But there were no new records set at Saturday's event, and there haven't been now for some years.

Kim herself proudly holds the female event record of 16 minutes and 53 seconds, set on May 31, 2014. Chris Davies' male record has been unbroken since August 3, 2013 at 14 minutes 39 seconds.

And the age graded record of 24 minutes 13 seconds was set on July 14, 2018 by Lavinia Petrie.

For the record the fastest finishers at Saturday's park run were Daniel Turner of Lawley Running Club in 17 minutes 16 seconds (male) and Isobelle Standell, of Telford AC in 20:06.

For more information about the park run, including the results visit https://www.parkrun.org.uk/telford/results/407/