St Anne's parkrun

Killerz

Building on the success of the other parkruns set up to date in Ireland over recent months, St Anne's parkrun kicks off on the 28th September. The run will take place every Saturday at 9:30 am in St Anne's Park, Raheny.

We'll always be looking for volunteers as well as runners, so if you are interested in getting involved, please PM me. All of the volunteer roles are straightforward and highly rewarding

I'll post further details, updates etc. on this thread as the date draws closer. Our facebook page went live on Friday evening, and will be updated with news etc.:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Annes-parkrun/133183410224824

Hit 'like' to keep yourself in tune with what's going on.

The registration website should be live within the next few weeks. Big thanks to the guys at Malahide and Griffeen for their guidance etc. to date. Any questions, thoughts, ideas, feedback - please let me know!

eoinín

Best of luck with this - I'm sure it will be a great success!

Amigaman

Good luck Kilerz , marking that date in the diary :-), nice to go running back in the ole' hood :-)
PS have you a map of the proposed route?

Killerz

Amigaman wrote: »

Good luck Kilerz , marking that date in the diary :-), nice to go running back in the ole' hood :-)
PS have you a map of the proposed route?

Hi Amigaman, thanks - just finalising the exact route at present, i'll post a link when sorted.

Killerz

With just under 6 weeks to go, our website is up and running now at the following address:

http://www.parkrun.ie/stannes/

You can follow a link from there to register etc. If you are already registered for any parkrun, you dont need to re-register for St. Anne's.

Provisional route map is up, under 'course' - ignore the route description underneath (its pretty much the course in reverse). Route subject to final tweaks etc. prior to launch day of 28th September. Like us on facebook (St. Anne's parkrun) to keep in the loop!

Interested in volunteering, or getting involved in the start-up? PM me! Looking forward to what is sure to be a super event in a great venue.

Another big thanks to the people at Malahide, Griffeen and Marlay for sharing their knowledge.

david-d

will my barcode from malahide park work for st annes?

PVincent

They work at any Parkrun worldwide

Killerz

Just want to bump this up again - our first run is this Saturday, starting at 9:30am. We'll be getting together around 9:15am or so for the usual course briefing, introductions etc. This will take place where the run finishes (where all the paths converge at the centre of the park, a short walk from the Red Stables buildings.

More details here:
http://www.parkrun.ie/stannes/

And keep up-to-date with St Anne's parkrun on facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/stannesparkrun

Usual parkrun procedure applies..... Don't Forget Your Barcode - and more importantly - Don't Take the Finishing Tokens Home!

Hoping to see some boardsies at the early events

KielyUnusual

Killerz wrote: »

Just want to bump this up again - our first run is this Saturday, starting at 9:30am. We'll be getting together around 9:15am or so for the usual course briefing, introductions etc. This will take place where the run finishes (where all the paths converge at the centre of the park, a short walk from the Red Stables buildings.

More details here:
http://www.parkrun.ie/stannes/

And keep up-to-date with St Anne's parkrun on facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/stannesparkrun

Usual parkrun procedure applies..... Don't Forget Your Barcode - and more importantly - Don't Take the Finishing Tokens Home!

Hoping to see some boardsies at the early events

I'll probably be there anyway J. I've a feeling this is going to be a very popular one. Probably going to be a lot of decent runners too being right smack in the middle of the Shamrock's turf. Fair play for getting involved in the organising of it and I'll likely see you down there Saturday morning.

Killerz

KielyUnusual wrote: »

I'll probably be there anyway J. I've a feeling this is going to be a very popular one. Probably going to be a lot of decent runners too being right smack in the middle of the Shamrock's turf. Fair play for getting involved in the organising of it and I'll likely see you down there Saturday morning.

Cheers, KU! Here's hoping it will be a success. I believe its a course with PB potential too, so hoping to see some fast times out there! See you there, if not this Saturday, some event in the future.

Amigaman

Hi Killerz
Sad to say I wont be able to make it to what I'm sure is going to be a great day on Sat. for the inaugural St. Annes Parkrun, I want to wish you and your team a fabulous day , looking forward to seeing the pictures and reading the race report .
With the addition of St. Annes to the Dublin parkrun family may I be the first to suggest that we look forward to next summer when perhaps we can organize one of these "Longest Parkruns" - http://www.parkrun.com/crispy/longest-parkrun-2013-2/ - now that would be fun :-)
regards
ed - ( who will be running on Sat. in his own Peurto Del Carmen parkrun :-) )

Killerz

Amigaman wrote: »

Hi Killerz
Sad to say I wont be able to make it to what I'm sure is going to be a great day on Sat. for the inaugural St. Annes Parkrun, I want to wish you and your team a fabulous day , looking forward to seeing the pictures and reading the race report .
With the addition of St. Annes to the Dublin parkrun family may I be the first to suggest that we look forward to next summer when perhaps we can organize one of these "Longest Parkruns" - http://www.parkrun.com/crispy/longest-parkrun-2013-2/ - now that would be fun :-)
regards
ed - ( who will be running on Sat. in his own Peurto Del Carmen parkrun :-) )

Thanks amigaman, appreciate it. That longest day thing looks intriguing.... Pencilled in for 2014!

pconn062

Some great times on that course today, hope to give one of these a go in a few weeks.

Killerz

Event went very well today, thanks everyone for supporting it. KielyUnusual was fastest boards.ie finisher (unless the one person that finished ahead of him is a boardsie that I am not aware of!). 233 finishers altogether, great weather etc. etc. Looking forward to the next one already.

Back down to earth now tomorrow with a long run to look forward to. Nice.

plodder

Killerz wrote: »

Event went very well today, thanks everyone for supporting it. KielyUnusual was fastest boards.ie finisher (unless the one person that finished ahead of him is a boardsie that I am not aware of!). 233 finishers altogether, great weather etc. etc. Looking forward to the next one already.

Back down to earth now tomorrow with a long run to look forward to. Nice.

Well done today! I think Marlay had the record with the biggest field for a first parkrun. I wouldn't be surprised if St Annes has the record for fastest finisher (Mick Traynor) for a first parkrun.

One interesting thing is that Mick did 15:49 today in Raheny and exactly the same time in Malahide back in March. So, maybe the two courses are comparable speed wise. Time well tell if that is the case.

Killerz

plodder wrote: »

Well done today! I think Marlay had the record with the biggest field for a first parkrun. I wouldn't be surprised if St Annes has the record for fastest finisher (Mick Traynor) for a first parkrun.

One interesting thing is that Mick did 15:49 today in Raheny and exactly the same time in Malahide back in March. So, maybe the two courses are comparable speed wise. Time well tell if that is the case.

Cheers plodder. That is interesting re the times! I think Aoife Talty may have beaten her own Irish parkrun female best
today?

belcarra

Hey Killerz, I ran today also and just wanted to say it was a great hosting!
The course is perfectly flat (apart from a half metre climb at one spot!!) and is in my opinion faster than Marlay and Malahide. A couple of tight corners but apart from that perfect!
So, I'd expect to see those times drop even lower as I'd say a few big hitters were probably saving themselves for Rathfarnham tomorrow.

KielyUnusual

Well done RD Killerz. Great event yesterday. Went off without a hitch. I especially loved the rows of deck chairs laid out at the finish. They might need to disinfect them though after all the sweaty runners sprawled out on them yesterday morning.

I reckon the course is a little faster than Malahide in that it's almost completely flat and there are no severe turns. That straight at the end of each lap seemed to go on forever though.

Killerz

belcarra wrote: »

Hey Killerz, I ran today also and just wanted to say it was a great hosting!
The course is perfectly flat (apart from a half metre climb at one spot!!) and is in my opinion faster than Marlay and Malahide. A couple of tight corners but apart from that perfect!
So, I'd expect to see those times drop even lower as I'd say a few big hitters were probably saving themselves for Rathfarnham tomorrow.

KielyUnusual wrote: »

Well done RD Killerz. Great event yesterday. Went off without a hitch. I especially loved the rows of deck chairs laid out at the finish. They might need to disinfect them though after all the sweaty runners sprawled out on them yesterday morning.

I reckon the course is a little faster than Malahide in that it's almost completely flat and there are no severe turns. That straight at the end of each lap seemed to go on forever though.

Thanks for the feedback folks, we were delighted with how it went. Well done on the performances. We have a great core team managing the event which kept everything running smoothly and made it go off without a hitch - i am indebted to them for the support. If anyone else from here is interested in being part of that team or even volunteering occasionally, please let me know.

Mick Traynor has put a target up there now, so we may see a faster time at some stage, possibly post-DCM.

We'll keep monitoring feedback on the tight corners, in an ideal world they would be more rounded, but we'll stick with them for now.

While the straight is long and challenging (mentally and physically), i think it works for an event like this, as its wide enough to allow lapping of runners, its slightly downhill, is fast because there's no more bends on the course once you hit it and its easy for us to see the runners coming in.

I agree re the deckchairs, they could get a bit manky after a while. :eek:

Murph_D

Great event. I loved the deckchairs too, nice touch. I presume they were provided by the pop-up coffee shop people?

I agree with KU that the long straight section, although I can see the reasoning behind it too. The left turn at the corner of the football pitch (the extreme NW corner of the course) is tight, but it's not the tightness that's the main issue, it's that so many people are congregating in this area using the football pitches. A lot of us were forced to cut this corner (and there was a temptation to cut it very widely indeed!)

I would have thought it would be possible to avoid a double-lap 5k in a park the size of St. Anne's (I run the perimeter occasionally and it's about 10k). However the park is heavily used so I assume the chosen course was probably a compromise with the authorities?

Anyway well done. Will be doing this regularly, and volunteering too.

belcarra

It must be pointed out that the corner in question relating to the kids football was a little bizarre in that they had a huge pitch to locate themselves on and they insisted on being in that corner on both laps.
Perhaps a quiet word with their trainers might allow them to move just a few yards inside the grass/path boundary and then everything should be good.
(Although there were some kids who were just blindly crossing our path and there didn't seem to be any parents too bothered about the race taking place, or even much more worryingly the children's own safety!)

Murph_D

Did you say "race"? Surely you mean "timed event"!

Fair enough, but the notion that parkrun does not have any priority or right of way, and to respect other users of the park comes into play here (of course that works both ways). It's possible there's a good reason for the kids congregating here, although it's pointless to speculate. I didn't get any sense myself that the football people were being disrespectful of runners or negligent of their children/charges. I'm sure they were as surprised by the runners as were other park users "caught" on the course.

cloneslad

I'm looking forward to doing this event. Rugby season has just started, but whenever I have a Saturday off I will be out.

Once I've taken part in one, and seen the course, I will offer my services as a volunteer on some other mornings when I have a game and can't run.

belcarra

Ah no, don't get me wrong! I'm not on about in a 'you must respect us because we are in a race and we supersede everything else' way!
I'm merely saying that like in every similar circumstance where two groups are using a space that perhaps a word between the two organisations should sort things out for future.
The alternative is to leave as-is and wait for the inevitable time when some adult runner smashes into a kid and then where are ya?!

Of course the solution may well end up meaning the course has to be redirected rather than the kids moved from their corner and I'd have no problem with that either.

And yes, of course 'timed event' is what I meant:o...certainly describes my run much better than 'race' anyways!!:pac:

Killerz

Folks, thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. We're learning as we go, so bear with us in the early weeks.

The gaa crew caught us off guard. It was the one corner we didn't have a marshal on, of course that was where we had the conflict! In fairness, it was a surprise to them as well as us. We've now tracked down who was playing there so they are aware of our run. Depending on numbers of volunteers, we'll put one or two up there this Saturday or tape it off or something.

We are a free run, we don't have right of way, so that is key to bear in mind. When running in a parkrun, you need to think as if you are out for a training run yourself and adapt to obstacles and hazards accordingly. This is what all runners did last week, and anyone we asked post-run said it did not impact upon their enjoyment of the run.

As for the course, yes, it would be fabulous to have a one lap loop. However, that would be taking up twice as many paths in what is a busy park every week, and we would also need more marshals. We'd also have to put in more hills

We have council approval for that course, so unfortunately we can't chop and change as we wish.

The chairs are the property of the coffee shop, both of which will be there as the weather and demand dictates on a weekly basis.

Jamie

slingerz

that was a serious time by Mick Traynor too. reckon i wouldnt be halfway round at that time!!!

whodafunk

I was there as a spectator on Saturday. Seemed like a great turnout and well organised. Fair play to all involved in getting this up and running.

Killerz

Another lovely morning down in St. Annes for our second event. Thanks to all runners and volunteers who were present and made it another success. Looking forward to seeing even more boardsies down there in the near future.

Pawwed Rig

Hi
I am thinking of doing this run tomorrow so am about to register. Do we know who is behind this site? The 'about us' section does not give much information so I am wary of keying in too much info.

Just my internet paranoia:rolleyes:

Don't mean to take away from the idea which I think is a great one and fair play to the organisers.

eoinín

Parkrun Ireland is part of the international Parkrun organisation, started 9 years ago, and with ca 600,000 registered runners worldwide. I think your info is safe enough, but there's more specific info on their data protection / privacy policy here:

http://www.parkrun.com/privacy/

Moe general info here
http://www.parkrun.com/about/overview/

Most relevant bits are probably:

"Every time you connect to parkrun websites your IP (Internet Protocol) address registers on our servers. Your IP address reveals no information other than the number assigned to you. We do not use this technology to get any personal data against your knowledge or free will (i.e., automatically recording e-mail addresses of visitors). Nor do we use it for any purpose other than to help us monitor traffic on our website, or (in case of criminal activity or misuse of our information) to cooperate with law enforcement.

We also store the details you provide to us during registration, which are needed to operate the parkrun site/service (eg. to send you your results, for our event teams to identify you when you volunteer etc). We use this data internally, and make copies of it for backup purposes. We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information."

Pawwed Rig

Thanks for the info. Did the run this morning. Many thanks to the organisers, it's a really good event.