River Valley parkrun

Andy, I swear this is the last time I will use this photo (this year) This week has been hard in many ways. Looking at the news, things look bleak. It can be difficult to look past the doom and gloom but we are going to try and find some of the positives at the moment (and, as you will see, there have been loads this week). Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Okay, so this week we got a bit of a fright. On Thursday Sammy, Pete's daughter, texted into the Core Group to say that the Run Report would be a bit delayed this week as Pete was in hospital! We all got a fright but Pete was very quick to text us and let us all know that he is okay. Talking to Pete this morning, he wanted to stress that despite not feeling well on Thursday, he is feeling fine now and has admitted that he was basically faking to get a bit of a rest! That's fair enough Pete, you deserve it.  In true Pete style, he asked the doctor if he can do a 5km walk in the hospital. Despite wanting to admit him to a...

  Pete captured this on Saturday morning in Clontarf No, we are not making up some new weird rhyme along the lines of Hands Knees Bumps-a-daisy. We are in fact referring to washing your Hands (the full happy birthday version), Wearing a mask on your Face not just in-doors but in crowded streets. Maintain your 2m distance even when wearing a mask. We all need to be extra cautious. The government advised that if you are planning on getting together as a family over the Christmas then you need to be extra cautious from last Friday.  If you need any other reason to be careful then you can talk to Brian McWeeney. Brian was diagnosed positive on Wednesday but as he said himself he didn't need a test to know he had it as he was very ill for two days. He has been recovering well since Friday and keeping a close eye on his temperature. Latest update is that Brian's temp has returned to normal for two days in a row now but he has to be have a normal temp 5 days in a row before he is all...

This week we had one of folks engaged in a marathon event. It started with queuing outside Aldi in order to get the right type of Kevin the Carrot, followed by a rest stop in Weatherspoons for breakfast followed by hitting the wall in the Christmas section of Pennys! Oh and someone else ran 26.2 miles. We think both Pete and Ross's efforts are both worthy of praise and commendation. Ross put some serious training whereas Pete hasn't been inside a Pennys since March 😂 More on Ross later. The Results This week (so far) 47 people walked, jogged or ran a 5km route of their choice at a time of their choosing. Our first We finisher is getting close to the elusive sub 20 5km and that is Bryan Donovan with a time of 20:15. Well done Bryan, keep pushing for the sub! First female finisher was, drum roll please, Imelda Kavanagh. Imelda got in ahead of Sigita by 6 secs and is obviously starting to shake off the marathon as her 5k times improve.  First junior is Sadhbh who continues to pu...

  We are truly blessed with the weather the last few days as it has been both dry and mild. If you wanted to use the weather for an excuse for not getting your 5k in then you are out of luck. We get the impression that a lot of people are simply forgetting to log their runs. Maybe they think it doesn't matter as we can't top the table when up against Tralee and St Annes. However the reality is that we are still challenging on a number of fronts including the "potential performance" and the total number of runs.  Get 'em logged folks and at least put us in with a chance. Do we really want to fall behind Marlay and we can still overtake Erris!  Congrats on the Milestones A few people have passed the 50 mark when it comes to (not) parkruns but one person has hit that 100 runs and that is Stephen Reid. Huge congratulations Stephen! A quick glance and those with over fifty include Una O'RIORDAN Siobhan MCCARTHY Sigita ZONBERGA David Martin KELLY Teresa CARROLL Coli...

  In the original competition of North East Fingal (aka Dublin) vs Kerry it is yet another win for Kerry. We had really hoped to wake up the Malahide crew but so far nothing to write home about. To those of you who are logging for Malahide do keep it up but also encourage your fellow Malahidians to start logging as we are fairly certain there are a lot more than 32 out running each week. Where's your f*%king pride So much for inspirational speeches! River Valley increased their total by a massive minus six on the previous week.  We might park the motivational speeches for now because our pride is locked up somewhere around Swords Central along with Pennys. The Country Table LOCATION PARKRUNNERS St Anne’s 204 Tralee 145 Clonbur Woods 129 Erris 94 River Valley 74 Bushy Dublin 40 Buncrana 36 Cabinteely 36 Marlay 35 Limerick 34 Malahide 32 Size isn't everything and we cannot look at St Annes and think they are only top because they are one of the biggest parkruns in the country. T...

  This week we started to hear serious news coming out about possible vaccines. Whatever about transmission rates and ICU bed occupancy the one thing that will see parkrun returning will be vaccines. It may well still be some time before they are certified for general use and even longer for the various manufacturers to actually make enough stock for it to reach us.  We are not saying there is light at the end of the tunnel but they have definitely completed the construction of the tunnel. For now we have to be content with virtual runs and (not) parkruns. The Inter County World Domination (not) parkrun table We can remember a time when the battle at the top of the table was between ourselves and the capital of the Kerry empire. They are just distant memories now. We can now sit back now knowing our race is done. There is no fight left in us and we will humbly retire and daydream of former glories! Like f*$k we will!!! Look at those numbers? 58 for River Valley. Let us have a ...