Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 67, February 2015 | Page 46

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Join the friendly, free 8am Saturday
morning 5km in your area!
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Parkrun foc

Village Fitness
St Francis parkrun

Facebook: StFrancisParkrun
We’re one of a few wheelchair-friendly parkruns
in SA, hosted on the paved roads of the St Francis
Links Golf Estate, which also makes it possible for
young families to run with their babies in prams and
for younger kids to join the family on bicycles. It’s
great to see families getting active and meeting new
people, and we often hear wonderful stories about
people who haven’t had the opportunity to do sport in
many years due to having kids or work commitments,
but now they’re turning it around.
Also, being a coastal holiday town with many retired
villagers, the beauty lies in the participation of the
70-plus generation, the oldest being in the 85-89 age
group – with a finishing time of 51:22! It started on
the bowling green when they heard of parkrun, and
one by one the bowlers started to join! They also
encouraged their non-bowling friends to join. Now
our ‘official sweepers’ are a group of 80-plus ladies,
finishing in around one hour.
The parkrun (and the village itself) is small enough
so we’re in the fortunate position that we get to
know each other personally, so no matter where you
are, at church or at the morning market, the grocery
store or the filling station, parkrunners are always
happy to see each other, as we know we share
something very special.
- Esti Stewart, Event Director

46

Competition Galore

TATS
parkrun SA S

Facebook: Lonehill-parkrun

Number of parkruns: 46
Number of events: 2677
Number of active runners: 96, 812
Number of individual runs: 558, 376
Total distance covered:
2, 791, 880km
*Last updated 13 January 2015

Lonehill parkrun

We launched in April 2014 with nothing more than
a few banners and word-of-mouth promotion in the
Lonehill community. At the launch event, Comrades
legend Bruce Fordyce predicted that the fast, yet
challenging two-lap course in the shadow of Lonehill
koppie, going around the heron- and sacred ibis-filled
bird-island in the middle of a carp-filled dam, would
attract runners and walkers of all abilities – but he
was still surprised to be beaten out of his usual top10 placing by a highly competitive young brigade of
relatively unknown runners from Diepsloot.
We’ve already uncovered a running protégé, Pule Petrus
Maeko from Diepsloot, who was spotted barefoot at the
front of the field at numerous events. He was fasttracked by local running mentor Marcel Viljoen into a
second place at the recent RAC 32km Tough One. Phillip
Maree of Fourways Roadrunners has also established
himself as the regular man to beat, posting the most
number of wins.
Within just 10 weeks, Lonehill parkrun was already one
of the top crowd-pulling parkrun venues in the world
and we’ve entered 2015 with over 5000 registered
parkrunners. They come in their droves, runners and
walkers of all abilities, fast and slow, with kids in prams,
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