ACTIVE Vale youngsters celebrated a popular town event’s first birthday in style with a visit from the Mayor of Evesham Coun Mark Goodge.
Evesham’s junior parkrun was established by a core team of volunteers headed up by Lindsey Lewis-Painter a year ago in a bid to provide a local running club for town youngsters to join.
Around 350 juniors are now registered at the junior parkrun 12 months on after volunteers raised £3,000 for the set up fees and equipment and a further £1,600 for a defibrillator.
Lindsay paid tribute to all those who worked together to raise the cash needed to bring the parkrun to life and singled out Evesham Vale Running Club, Evesham Vale Triathletes, Evesham Round Table, Evesham And DIstrict Angling Association and Wychavon District Council for particular thanks.
“Robert Raphael who owns Hampton Ferry has allowed us to use his land each week which we are so grateful to him, it gives us a great base and the whole community can access the venue and enjoy a warm drink on the colder mornings,” she said.
“Our anniversary event saw 46 juniors dressed up as their heroes and ran, jogged or walked the 2k course. The Mayor even ran part of the course and has stated he will be back!,” she added.
Lindsey will now hand over the reins to Kelly-Ann Archer to out the day to day running of the event.
“It’s been a great year establishing the event and seeing all the juniors come on in leaps and bounds. Some children start off by walking and jogging the course with their parents then a few weeks later they turn up and run the whole course on their own and the smile at the end says it all.
“I will still volunteer and help out and I hope Kelly-Ann will be able to bring new ideas and get more juniors involved,” she added.
Evesham junior parkrun is a free weekly event every Sunday at 8:45am at Hampton Ferry.
Visit www.parkrun.org.uk/evesham-juniors for more.
