Kensington parkrun Event #227 Report

The last parkrun of September enticed 79 people to run, jog, or walk the course this week, taking the monthly total of finishers to 389. This was the second busiest month ever, and our busiest month with no special events. There have been 2,602 finishers so far this year, putting us 99 behind last year’s total, with 14 parkrun days still to go. We are 213 finishers behind our busiest year of 2019.

First Timers and Visitors

We welcomed ten first timers to Kensington. Five of whom were completing their first parkruns. Welcome and well done to Fred H LUZ, Jeff GRIFFITH, Karen SAUNDERS, Linda ANDREN, and Mark HEANEY! We hope we’ll see you back again soon.

Janet GRUDZIEN JOHN, whose home parkrun is Huntingdon in the UK, was completing her 161st parkrun at her 56th venue and has completed parkruns in 6 countries. Christopher JOHN, also from Huntingdon parkrun, was completing his 128th parkrun and 44th different venue. Another cross-border visitor was Joshua FINN who joined us from Downsview parkrun in Toronto. Liz LITKOWSKI and Ezra SOBEL have done most of their parkrunning at South Boulder Creek parkrun but have recently been running at Lille parkrun, Ann Arbor. Kensington is their 6th different parkrun event.

Milestone Celebrations

We celebrated two milestones this week, both of whom marked the occasion by running PBs! Noah TESSEMA got to wear the white Junior 10 parkrun milestone sash during the briefing. He has now completed 11 parkruns, all at Kensington and completed his first in August 2019. Kyujin CHOI completed his 52nd parkrun today, so wore the red 50 sash! He has run 48 times at Kensington, also completing parkruns at Fletchers Cove, Leakin Park, Danehy Park (Cambridge, MA) and Jamaica Pond (Boston, MA). Kyujin first ran at Kensington in July 2022.

Occasionally we like to acknowledge Kensington parkrun specific milestones. As of event #227 we have new members of the 10 Kensington parkruns club: Varalisa Tarasova, Ping-Jung LIU, and Noah TESSEMA. A new member of the 20 club: Dave HAAGA. A new member of the 40 club: Kate MITCHEL. A new member of the 60 club: Michael BARRETT. New members of the 80 club: Sharon ORNDORFF, Andy HASSELWANDER. And last, but not least, a new member of the Kensington parkrun 100 club: Eddie BALMER.

Community Announcement

The run briefing this week also included a reminder of the Colleen’s BA 5k on October 14th. The event starts further along the Rock Creek Trail at Connecticut Avenue at 9am. There is a Kensington parkrun team if anyone wants to sign up as part of it. There is also a virtual option if you want to complete your weekly parkrun on the usual course.

First Finishers and PBs

First finishers were Roxanne KIRCHER and Andrei RIDZEL, both of whom ran PBs. Lucas WEISS and Serena VENTURA were our first juniors, with Lucas also running a PB. Andrei’s time was also a new age category record for SM30-34. Alan Dixon also ran an age group record time of 17:18 in the VM50-54 age category, and our highest age graded performance of the day (85.93%). Well done all of you.

Including those already mentioned, there were 18 PBs this week, almost 23% of finishers! Congratulations to Alan DIXON (35 seconds), Allan ELSBERRY (3 seconds), Andrei RIDZEL (1 second, and getting ever closer to his goal of sub-17 minutes), Andrew HARVAN (1 minute 14 seconds), Elyahb KWIZERA (36 seconds), Janice DERR (46 seconds), Kevin DAMANDA (2 seconds), Klaus JOHNSON (1 minute 59 seconds), Kyujin CHOI (19 seconds), Lucas WEISS (36 seconds), Marcy HARPER (2 minutes 12 seconds), Milo VENTURA (59 seconds), Noah TESSEMA (32 seconds), Ping-Jung LIU (27 seconds), Roxanne KIRCHER (3 minutes 11 seconds), Thomas GLAVIN (12 seconds), Tong Ae RONDEAU (25 seconds), and Watal FURUSAWA (1 minute 58 seconds).

We also had another groundhog event (running the same time in consecutive visits). Alexander SMITH ran a PB of 24:30 on his last time out at event #225 and ran the same time at event #227. Well done Alexander, and we have no doubt we’ll see you bettering that time in the coming weeks.

Volunteer Thanks

A big thank you to this week’s volunteers: Vanessa CHANG, Sebastian CHANG-LEUNG, Greg GORMAN, Andy HASSELWANDER, Anna HASSELWANDER, Adam KILLWAY, Debra KILLWAY, Pamela MARCUS, Lena MECH, Kate MITCHEL, Paloma MOTA, Matt PERKINS, Olga RIDZEL, Caroline SUBRA, David WOLCOTT, Patrick WRIGHT, and William WRIGHT. Remember that we are always in need of volunteers to wear high-viz vests and help make future parkruns happen. No experience is necessary.

Hopefully see some of you at Babycat brewery in Kensington for this week’s pub run on Thursday night at 6pm.

Matt P