18 to 21 April 2026 - A parkrun, a marathon, and a Spunch

 

Saturday 18 April - Wythenshawe parkrun #662. Run Director Dan nearly gets mown down by 378 runners dashing off on their Saturday morning run.

I stayed at the back for a while.

Beside the football pitches and along to Far Bridge. Soon after that we start to be lapped, the leaders finishing in a little over 17 minutes today.

I passed a few folk and finished in position 296 out of 378 participants, in 33:38. Here are some of those I overtook, at the finish.

Sue wasn't running today. Yoga took priority. Coffee and cake as usual afterwards. Full results are here.

Sunday 19 April - The Manchester Marathon

With all our local roads closed for this event, I took a stroll into Timperley village and Brooklands Road. Found Fechin, who used to run marathons in under two and a half hours, glad that he wasn't in today's race despite perfect conditions. I wished I'd been running/walking, it was a great event. I took a few snaps of random runners, and I saw Richard Evans storm past at well under three hour pace. Well done, Richard.

Here are the snaps I took on the day, including throngs of folk coming along Park Road, seemingly hours after the leaders had sped through.

Tuesday 21 April - Spunch Cheadle Hulme

This running/walking event was a nice activity for a sunny but cool evening. Here's Sue beside a pond that rather blocked our way to a certain satellite point. We lost time here.

Back at the Pointing Dog pub after our 120 minute outing, we enjoyed a beer and a meal whilst waiting for Alistair Pooler to return to base with a very creditable haul of 920 Spunch points. Here are the results:

Here's the 12km route that I took. Sue did the same but picked up a couple of outliers whilst I had a rest.

Spunch turns out to be good fun. We will book some more events shortly.