Peter Mountain and Keith Brackstone attended the first meeting of the Little Stoke Junior parkrun Planning Group last night at the Parish Community Centre in Little Stoke Park. A lot of emails have already passed backwards and forwards and Dave Skeet from Little Stoke parkrun has put in a lot of effort to get the project to the point where he is waiting on a decision from a local source as to whether they will fund the £3,000 necessary to get the event running. He is confident of a positive outcome when the decision is reached on Tuesday 25th February 2014. Once funding is in place it is hoped to get the Junior parkrun up and running within 6 weeks.
So what is a Junior parkrun? Like parkrun for adults it is a weekly free run. Junior parkruns will take place on Sunday mornings at 9.00 a.m. and are for children aged 4 to 14 and will be run over a 2 kilometre course. Parents will be encouraged to run with their children (particularly the younger ones). There will be a series of recognitions with bronze, silver and gold wrist bands for 10k (5 runs), half-marathon (11 runs) and marathon (22 runs) plus PB certificates.
The aim of the Group is to get Little Stoke Junior parkrun up and running first and then – hopefully – move on and establish a second junior parkrun in Bristol at a later date.
If you would like to help organise junior parkruns then please contact Keith Brackstone at keithatrvp@blueyonder.co.uk . The Planning Group are looking for 4 or 5 Race Directors to run the events on a rota basis plus a team of volunteers to help.
Once the junior parkrun is up and running Keith Brackstone will start WISE Juniors at 6.15 p.m. on a Wednesday night at Kip Keino Athletic Stadium Stoke Gifford to encourage athletes between the ages of 8 and 14 to train mid-week between the junior parkruns: again volunteers to help with ths would be welcome.