parkrun inspiration

I've been thinking about what I could write for this blog. It wouldbe very easy to talk about how great parkrun is, but I'm assuming thatyou all know that already. So I thought it would be nice to have a lookat who (without mentioning any names) inspires me at my home parkrun.

Let'sstart with the speedy ones. They must train pretty hard to be able torun 5km in the times they do, and I do aspire to be as fast as them.But do they inspire me? I'm afraid the answer is no.

Who does inspire me then?

• The runner that has taken up running in order to combat his type-2 diabetes.



• The volunteer that has run tens of marathons and is still a keen runner, yet chooses to give his time to volunteering.



• The runner that finishes in last position almost every week butstill turns up because they know that their finishing position doesn'tmatter.



• The volunteers that have no interest in running but turn up in allweather conditions to make sure that the runners get their weeklyparkrun fix.



• The runner in the 80-84 age category that turns up every now and then, and who finishes sub-35 each time.

They are just the ones that I can think of, I'm surethere are others (and I feel bad for missing them off of this list)which will come to mind in the next few days.

Sometimeswhen you're feeling down that you can't quite break into that elusivesub-17 club, have a look around you at the other amazing people thatare around you every week. Talk to some of the older or slower runners- I bet you find out some pretty inspirational facts about them.

Steve
(from blog7t)