William's 50th parkrun!

It was an exciting morning yesterday as William joined the parkrun 50 club!

We were umming and ahhing beforehand about whether or not to go ahead on Saturday due to the horrible weather forecast. I checked it every day last week and saw no improvement to the 30+ mph winds and rain showers predicted. We explained about the weather to William and amazingly he wasn't put off. Andy baked the traditional milestone cake along with brownies and welsh cakes so we were really hoping that William would manage to get round the course.

We heard the wind howling outside first thing Saturday morning but the rain seemed to have died down. Checked the forecast one last time which was now showing no rain so we headed off to the park. William was very excited and told several people it was his 50th as soon as we arrived at the bandstand. He got called up to the front during the usual pre-run announcements and received a huge cheer from the crowd. Couldn't have been prouder..... but he still had to complete the run!

We set off at a brilliant pace for William, in fact I had to work quite hard to keep up with him climbing the hill to the cenotaph! He ran the first lap brilliantly, the second a little slower, but still with determination. On the last half lap we were joined by some of our cheetah friends at different stages and William soon had a bit of an entourage with him! They ran with him till the start of the finishing straight and then it was down to him. He finished in 47.04, so 3 minutes off the PB he had wanted but in that wind I think he did extremely well!

Heading to the finish!

Sam also had a good run (his fastest since September), and he was a happy boy the whole way round, especially in the areas with high winds!

After the run we took our cakes down to the cafe to share. William looked so proud and happy.

Thank you to everyone who has supported him, not just today but at every parkrun since he started 14 months ago.  I was amazed when he joined the 10 club and I'm even more astounded that he's come this far, especially considering he's only 5 years old! Here's to the next 50!

New and improved countdown, now with Skylanders!