Not only was it the GVH parkrun tour event this weekend, but we also had several of our runners out at some far flung locations, new parkrun milestones and Anthony Fogden claiming a new 10K PB.
GVH Parkrun Tour
The on-tour location for November was Church Mead parkrun close to Amersham, designed to test our runners with off-road hills. Looking at the difficulty grading, it was most certainly a test, slightly tougher than Wendover Woods, more difficult that Gadebridge and in an entirely different league to Rickmansworth – see chart below.
The higher the score the tougher the course
Ten hill loving GVH’s, including our newly engaged couple James & Mary (huge congratulations to you both), made the short journey across to Amersham and all had a great run.
Church Mead runners
Andrew Wells took a fantastic 2nd place finisher, just 10s behind the lead runner, closely followed by Russell (5th), Jack (7th) and Tom (8th) . Our ladies did equally well with Kim finishing 4th and Ines in 6th. Helen Pollard also had a great run, finishing just 2 mins behind her October Cassiobury park run time, despite the hills.
It was reported by most to be a “Beautiful run but very tough hills!!!. So tough, that James was spotted walking up the hill!” He was running with the buggy to be fair.
Church Mead Runners
Other parkrun highlights include :
over at Gadebridge parkrun Michael Linden finished 2nd in 20:16, whilst Natalie Wheeler & Sam Raffety were our first ladies home.
Further afield at New Earswick parkrun near York, Megan McCreadie returned to park run for the 1st time in 2 years. She had a storming run to finish 3rd woman in 23:53 and was our faster woman of the day – Well done Megan on your 25th Parkrun! 
Vince Ellerby tackled Houghton Hall parkrun near Dunstable, and finished 17th in 21:29. Interestingly last week Vince ran at Black Park parkrun and also finished in 21:29, taking 7 sec of the Clubs V60 Black Park record. Well done Vince on your 596 park run. We hope that you share your plans for your 600 event so that we can all join you to celebrate.
Once again proving that no GVH vests get left behind, Susie Ivin packed her vest and running shoes and travelled to East Singapore for a hot and humid East Coast Park parkrun.
Finally rounding off our runners on tour section. Well done Sarah Shillabeern running 8 miles in New York City on what strava describes as her 800th run.
Anthony Fogden run smashes his 10km PB at The Watford Joggers Autumn 10km
Well done Anthony on a new PB of 54:58, taking 93 secs off his previous best.
With no fellow GVH crew running this event, Anthony managed to rope in Deborah Fogden . He reports …”Fantastic weather and conditions . A well run organised event with 301 runners. Tough undulating course- I think more or less the XC course for a few weeks time. – our newest member elect (My wife Deborah Fogden) ran her first timed event and came in at an incredible 01:04:05 – her aim anything under 01:10:00!! As the only GVH today we both finished as fastest club runners in our categories – that is unlikely to ever happen again”. Well done again both
Anthony and Deborah at watford 10k
That concludes the weekly round up. Well done everyone that got out out on training runs, club reps or clubs runs this week. Huge kudos to Teresa Reason – who ran what looks like the longest training run of the week, 18.5 miles around Milton Keynes.