The Queens of Burgess pt1 + contribution, commitment and celebration! - Burgess parkrun #608 - 04/04/26
- aqasanu
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
I love me some parkrun tourism; however, I am fortunate to have a wonderful home parkrun, which I marvelled at during the course check. I love Burgess Park, home to Burgess parkrun.
Today was the birthday of one of our Run Directors, Georgina, who has an incredible 157% volunteer ratio. Georgina is an official Adidas running coach who brings her true and authentic self to our event. One of our volunteers reported some tourists saying, “Well, that was the best run director’s brief I’ve ever heard”. Georgina is absolutely one of the Queens of Burgess parkrun and a sports events leader in the making. 🙂
After a rousing round of Happy Birthday for Georgina, we were off, all 458 participants, including Phil, who was joining the 250 club 🙂
Phil started his parkrun journey back in July 2017. Over this time, he’s had a few long-term injuries; however, he continued to attend and joined the volunteer 50 club last year. Phil is one of our Hi Viz heroes. Parkrun is built on volunteers, and we appreciate Phil’s additional generosity, being one of the people who regularly brings bananas to our event, enabling everyone to leave with both a buzz and some carbs in their step. Asked about his favourite parkrun to date, he recalled the first time he was able to run 5k after an injury, whilst at Amsterdamse Bos parkrun in Amsterdam. It’s an event set up by one of our former Event Directors, Laura. It takes place in a forest, and after listening to Phil, I could picture him running through it, and I felt his sense of triumph at the end. With 6 country flags across 45 locations, Phil enjoys and contributes to parkrun in equal measure.
From the old hands to the new starters, I had the pleasure of finishing with Cheynne and Juliette, friends doing their first and second parkruns respectively. Having parkwalk as part of the parkrun offer provides a safe and welcoming entry point for new people to come along and get involved. I look forward to seeing where their parkrun journey takes them.
Talking of running journeys, I was introduced to the Super Halfs series by Remi, a Burgess regular. It’s a series of six breathtaking half marathons across six European cities: Lisbon, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Cardiff and Valencia, with 1 super medal for completing them all. I like the half-marathon distance, so this challenge really appeals to me. If some of these cities also have a parkrun, then I can see this becoming a bucket list challenge for me 🙂
Happy running, walking, or volunteering.
You can read about how parkrun was created by the founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, a care leaver, in his book ‘One Small Step’, The Definitive Account of how a run became a Global Movement by clicking here.
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