#361 Event Report
We were visiting family in Singapore following a jaunt across Vietnam, so this led us to East Coast Park parkrun. Having attempted to acclimatise for 2 weeks and failed, I had faith that the tail walkers, my husband and son had chosen correctly when planning this morning!
#359 Event Report
This week's event report and photography credit goes to Karianne Di Salvo, Co-ED and RD at East Coast Park parkrun. We think you will agree, its a corker!
National Day Event Report #357
Good morning and welcome to East Coast Park parkrun event #357
Eastcoastpark@parkrun.com to volunteer.
Achievement turning 58 today.
Singapore National Day
Timekeeper isn’t a scary volunteer role.
Cake with your coffee
O is for Onward as One
Amazing Volunteers
Sovereignty
Tourist in your own city today
Praiseworthy volunteers
Accommodating for everyone
Recreational pass time
Kid friendly & Pet friendly on a handheld lead
people, no event without you.
accessible for all
run or walk!
knock off those milestones!
reassurance you won’t be last!
undoubtedly becoming noticed worldwide.
nationwide Free Events for life!
Thanks for having me today, even though I’m joining you from afar. Broad Park parkrun is my usual Saturday morning exercise, but I really enjoy doing the occasional run report for other venues that I hope to tick off soon.
Please come join me in Christchurch New Zealand, we have four parkrun venues to choose from.
Foster Park, 30min drive south from the city to Rolleston. Beautiful sports complex with a fast under foot surface.
Pegasus, 30min drive north of the city. Two laps of the township’s own man-made lake in park like settings, simply amazing location.
Broad Park, 10min from the city centre is the parkrun by the beach. Set in coastal surroundings including the run through Bottle Lake Forest, this course is simply not to be missed if visiting New Brighton Beach.
Hagley, the park that is the middle of everything that is Christchurch. The biggest parkrun in NZ, be part of history and join the massive field of 450+ weekly.
Completely Random Facts
1st April saw the 500,000th parkrun event...
If just one parkrun event was held every day, it would take more than 1,368 years for them all to take place...
Did you know… there are 58 registered parkrunner’s named Barbie and 3,124 named Ken.
Numbers are in.
222 park people covered the 5km today, 92 being new to parkrun East Coast, new personal bests to 27 lucky people as well. Welcome to you and the journey to come.
milestones to Elena February celebrating joining the 10 club, Haythem El-Ansary the 25 club. Congratulations to you both.
Check out the results page www.parkrun.sg for the full run down, what you won’t see is the volunteer stats, I’ve included this below.
A big thankyou to the 20 volunteers today, with 1,950 credits of experience!
volunteers@EastCoast-Name-Total volunteer credits-(Home parkrun)
52 Karianne Di Salvo 106 (East Coast Park)
59 Martin Tay 60 (East Coast Park)
26 Shireen Bailey 26 (East Coast Park)
43 Punam Owens 149 (East Coast Park)
1 Darren de Groot 53 (Broad Park)
1 Pete Scolls 324 (Edinburgh)
2 Annicea Madine 204 (Edinburgh)
2 Karamjit Singh 69 (Presint 18)
20 Imran Zaffar 28 (East Coast Park)
1 Sarbjeet Kaur 52 (Presint 18)
36 Muhamad Rizal 120 (East Coast Park)
4 Hannah Sia 4 (East Coast Park)
1 Kelvin Lim 20 (Bishan)
1 Bei Preston Tyalor 1 (Castlemaine)
1 Michele Webb 92 (Great Salterns)
1 Alex Marsh 21 (Brighton & Hove)
1 Melanie Young 290 (Ashton Court)
1 Doris Dondur 115 (Ernest Ullmann)
1 Anwen Davies 177 (Panshanger)
39 Stuart McIntosh 39 (East Coast Park)
Volunteers usually go about their business without much publicity, without these amazing people there wouldn’t be parkrun. Thank you.
Be a volunteer first timer… I'm sure you could find something that suits you.
Get involved: eastcoastpark@parkrun.com
That's about everything, so run well, take care, be kind to others and remember it's only 2 days till East Coast Park parkrun #358.
Darren de Groot
A5159039
#347 Event Report
***Event Report Delivery***
This week’s event report is another corker written by regular parkrunner Imran.
It's a cheer for our new RD Shireen and all our hi-vis heroes. An ode to our Singapore Shufflers and celebrations for all our milestones and achievements!
Everyone is a winner at parkrun!
Read it in full here:
ECP parkrun 347
The amazing Shireen Bailey took the mantle for her first parkrun as Run Director! To be honest - she was AMAZING and she has set quite the standard for the rest of us to live up to.
Not to take away from her amazing performance but the other story of today was: The day of the Daniels.
All 3 first finishers today were Singapore Shufflers - well done to all of you!!
We had 2 Daniels finish 1st and 2nd with quite frankly diabolical times in this heat and humidity.
Daniel Allender took gold with a personal PB with 16:40. I think I was still chatting away at the start line whilst he crossed the finish line.
Daniel Leow took silver with 16:42. He was 1 second off matching his ECP PB of 16:41 - which would have still not quite taken gold today!
Noboru Matsumoto an ECP regular took the bronze with 17:11.
ECP welcomed 34 Singapore Shufflers today for their monthly 5k time trial.
The visit from the Shufflers resulted in a super 129 parkrunners today.
I ended up taking the group photo of the Shufflers and I think we should introduce a parkrun dress code which stops all these ridiculous Shufflers going topless and putting the rest of us with Dad bods to shame!!
Now back to the event…
Along with Daniel Allender we had 19 personal PBs today - which is phenomenal on this weather!!
We celebrated a wonderful 25 volunteer milestone by the ever-charming Pris Chew who gave everyone a very entertaining first timers welcome!
We welcomed visitors from UK, South Africa and New Zealand and Australia today. Including a lovely family from Australia “The Lees” who brought their three girls with them with the youngest Isabelle finishing with a great 54:14! Well done also to Caitlin and Ruby - great job girls!
Also, a great well done to young Gemma Soh for finishing her 3rd parkrun even whilst being held back by her mum Li Ying. Well done young lady!!
Finally, a thank you to all the Hi-Viz heroes:
Shireen BAILEY, Simon BAILEY, Priscilla CHEW, Roberto DE VIDO, Karianne DI SALVO, Norman LOCKHART, Valerie LOCKHART, Punam OWENS, Martin OXLEY, Pranav VENKAT, Riko WATANABE, Imran ZAFFAR
We are always looking for volunteers so please do get in touch!! Ta
Report: Imran Zaffar
Photography: Shireen, Karianne, Pris and Karianne
Thank you, Imran! You always leave us with a smile on our face!
Well, that's a wrap from us. Please do get in touch if a hi-vis bib has you name on it for next week and we'll see you all then!
#345 Event Report
Now on to the main report - I forgot to do a Star Wars style parkrun event report on 4th May - so I am doing a belated one today!
A long time ago in a park not too far way…
The East Coast Park parkrun was in session with event 345!
Today Emporer Renee VAN DE BULT was in charge of proceedings at todays podrace (aka parkrun). She was ably assisted by her legion of stormtroopers:
88 Runners of all abilities gathered to participate in the free, weekly, timed 5k event.
The course was flat and fast, and was perfect for parkrunners and walkers of all levels. The event was timed, so runners could see their official time for the run with a barcode scanning system, so runners could collect points towards their parkrun milestone scores.
The East Coast Park parkrun is a great way to get fit, meet new people, and enjoy the outdoors. On this particular day - it felt like we were running in the desserts of Tatooine - it felt HOT!
The parkrunners lined up at the start line, eager to get started. The starter gave the signal, and the runners were off. They quickly spread out across the course, each runner running at their own pace. Imran as usual started out like a Pod speedster and ended up limping home like a Bantha!
The park was especially beautiful today with a stunning sunrise! And some of the trees looked like they were from the Jungles of Naboo.
Todays podrace winner was parkrun debutant Ezra Ganske running his first ever parkrun with a hyperdrive time of 19:25 that puts the Millenium Falcon to shame!
Joining him on the Kessel Run podium were Viraaj Mehta and Stephen Ramwell who came 2nd and 3rd.
We had 13 parkrunners who completed their first ever parkrun today! 5 of whom came in the Top 30! The Empire is still deciding whether to punish these individuals with double the entry fee for next weeks run for being far too fast for us mere mortals!
A huge galactic commendation must go to Zoe B (in the 11-14 age group) who was running her 2nd ever parkrun and finished as the fastest female finisher with a time of 24:12!!
A special mention to young Alex Ko who joined us for parkrun today after hearing about it on veteran parkrace speedster Pris Chews running blog (prischew.com).
The runners ran and ran, until they reached the finish line. They crossed the line, cheered by the volunteers who were there to greet them. They collected their finish tokens and their barcodes, and they headed off to the Starbucks to enjoy a well-deserved drink and a chat with their fellow runners.
It had been a great day at the East Coast Park parkrun. The runners had enjoyed the run, the company, and the weather. They had all made new friends, and they had all gotten a little bit fitter.
And as the runners headed home, they all knew that they would be back next week for another parkrun.
May the force be with you…
#341 Event Report
#337 Event report
New Years Eve 2022 #331
Event #331
I’m home from a lovely wholesome morning at parkrun. As usual, it was the best start to my Saturday and I couldn’t be happier to close 2022 in the company of my new parkrun family. This morning was positively cool for Singapore standards; the air wasn’t too heavy and the sun glinted out from behind the clouds. There is something so special about running nearby the water as it glimmers, passing by the palm trees and seeing the most precious dogs as you’ll ever see.
100 participants showed up for parkrun today. We had 12 volunteers: Alan, Alexandra, Damaris, Ekaterina, Hua Peng, Karianne, Kristina, Les, Martin, Pris and Punam. An enormous thank you to all you wonderful wonderful hi-vis heroes who make parkrun happen. Damaris, thank you for running the event. It was a fantastic finish to the parkrun year and we are very lucky to have you. Pris, you did a super job on the first timers briefing, what a lovely introduction to ECP for our 38 first timers. 14 of those first timers were first time ever park runners! Prepare to say goodbye to your Saturday lie-ins…
Today was a big day for Natasha Agars who ran her 100th parkrun!
Congratulations on a brilliant achievement. We also had 13 personal bests today. With a new year around the corner, I’m sure lots of you are thinking about new year’s resolutions. Why not consider being a volunteer and giving back to the parkrun community? With a wide variety of positions available, there is a role to suit everyone. If you want to walk/run as well as volunteer, you could do the first timers briefing, the report, be the tail walker or do the event day course check. The volunteer team at ECP is inclusive and so friendly; shoot them an email at eastcoastpark@parkrun.com if you fancy a fulfilling Saturday morning.
And with that, our year of 2022 parkruns is over. If you’re not too tired tomorrow morning, see you at Bishan park for special Sunday parkrun to welcome 2023.
Report written by Clara Sofillas
#328 Event Report – A Spontaneous Singapore
A huge thank you to Josephine Johnson for this weeks event report. We think you will agree, it's a heartwarming read:
#328 10/12/22 – A Spontaneous Singapore
On Tuesday lunchtime I was all set to meet friends at Colchester Castle parkrun (England). Then I got the text from my partner, saying he had to fly out to Singapore for work on Thursday and would I like to join him. I automatically knew there would be a parkrun involved (that’s why he’s a keeper lol) a few phone calls to reschedule this & that later and my flights booked BOOM… I’m on my way!
I’m chasing my international parkrun compass challenge so East Coast Park was at the top of the to do list. I am totally smitten! It’s a beautiful park, with lush green trees, bird calls I didn’t recognise, loads of space for cyclists, rollerbladers and the non-parkrunners. I adored running past the Tai Chi class, the fishermen busy on the beach and families just enjoying the early morning.
Today captured everything about the parkrun ethos I love. Thanks to Punam the RD encouraging me to write this report. I am very glad she did, as her team of orange bib hero’s, Alan Simpson, Damaris Carlisle, Hua Peng Wang, Imran Zaffar, Karianne Di Salvo, Katja Baxter, Michael Ballard, Priscilla Chew, Shireen Bailey and Stuart Mcintosh totally smashed the day! They were very friendly, approachable and very encouraging as I shuffled by through jetlag & the humidity. I really wanted to share what a super community it is and how easy it is to run & volunteer. If you are reading this and haven’t volunteered at East Coast Park yet, please do! The core volunteer numbers would love a local or visiting speedier participant to complete their 5K and then help with barcode scanning or a slower shuffler like me to write the report.
parkrun is all about the people and I love how strangers just “chat” as we all have that same connection. It was fab to meet Mick from Sydney who is an outreach Ambassador, Mollie who did her first EVER parkun, well done you! You soooo have to aim for a t-shirt now no excuse lol. Rebecca from Cardiff who is in town for a conference and Steve from London who is visiting his son. We all joined the core team of regulars & fellow tourists for the obligatory coffee at Starbucks. With its amazing aircon and fast friendly service and loads of space in & out, we continued our chats until jet lag called for a nap.
Well done to all to all the 74 runners, jeffers & walkers. Thank you East Coast Park parkrun I will return on my next Singapore visit!
#loveparkrun
Event Report: Josephine Johnson