Saturday 9th May saw 983 participants take part on a beautifully sunny, if a little warm, event. We had a fantastic 60 volunteers assist by marshaling, time keeping, bar code scanning, token sorting plus all of the many essential roles we have, to run each event. Volunteers, we love you and couldn't do it without you!
Great support was also given by two VI guides, Symela and Sarah, this week and Vicky who signed for the RD's briefing. Your assistance is greatly appreciated and helps our event be inclusive. 💜
Camille celebrated her 25th event and Sanna celebrated her 250th! We also were joined by a team of hens from Leighton Buzzard fun runners who were celebrating Jenny's Hen party! Good luck to you and your intended, Jenny!
If you want to volunteer for next Saturday please email [email protected]
New and seasoned volunteers welcome!
Milton Keynes parkrun – Event #755 🏃♀️🏃♂️
What a fantastic morning at Willen Lake! We welcomed 915 finishers supported by an amazing team of 51 volunteers who made the event possible — thank you all for giving your time and energy.
A special congratulations to Arjun, who completed his final volunteering activity for his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award today. We’re delighted he promises to return soon to reach that impressive 100 volunteer milestone!
It was also wonderful to welcome Hayley and her hens — congratulations and thank you for choosing Milton Keynes parkrun as part of your celebrations 🎉
We were thrilled to see 36 parkrun first timers join us this morning — we hope this was the first of many Saturdays with us!
A big thank you as well to our brilliant pacers who joined us today, helping so many runners achieve their goals and target times — your support is hugely appreciated 👏 (see comments for future volunteering details!)
👏 Milestones celebrated today:
• 1 × Junior 10 milestone
• 8 × 25 milestones
• 2 × 50 milestones
• 2 × 100 milestones
Thank you to everyone who walked, jogged, ran, volunteered, and cheered. Have a great week and we look forward to seeing you all again next Saturday. 👏
Welcome to Milton Keynes parkrun!
We hope you all like our beautiful course. 😍
#parkrun #mkparkrun #loveparkrun🌳 #miltonkeynes #willenlake
@willen_lake@parkrunuk@mkfmradio
🥳 Happy 16th birthday to us! 🥳
Where this week, every run/walk came with a free shower!
Well done to all 932 participants and a huge thank you to the 69 volunteers. The new funnel system seemed to cope with the numbers well.
📊 Here’s a few stats from this last year:
38994 runs/walks have been completed (17% increase on the previous year) by 9333 participants.
2576 volunteer occasions (14% increase) by 593 individuals.
🎁 And if anyone would like to give us the best birthday present ever, what we would really love is a full roster early on every week this year!!! As one of last week’s first time volunteers said “I now realise it’s just the same buzz volunteering as running and I can’t wait to do it again!” Just email in with your barcode number, which date, and what you’d like to do.
🎺NEW Double Funnel trial this weekend – PLEASE READ!🎺
Firstly, our usual pre-course check will determine whether we can go ahead with the cold weather in the morning. We will update here and on the website in the morning if we have to cancel. parkrun.org.uk/cancellations gives a list of all UK cancellations.
Now, the main reason for this post.
Following our huge numbers and the queue to enter the finish funnel on Christmas day, we’ve been putting our heads together, and we are going to trial an alternative double funnel method this weekend, that has been successfully used at a couple of other parkruns.
Put simply, we will have two independent funnels with separate timekeepers and finish tokens, and when both are open during the busy period, YOU CAN CHOOSE WHICH FUNNEL TO GO DOWN – please pick the quieter one. We will then work our magic to merge the two sets of results. Do not expect the finish token you receive to be anywhere close to your final position in the results – this is part of the results processing magic!
Whilst you don’t need to understand the details of how it all works, here are the key pointers for participants:
• Go to the funnels as directed, and when both sides are open, take your pick, but look for the quieter one.
• If you are with an under-11 or a dog, please both pick the same funnel so you are not separated! Equally, if you cannot bear to pause your conversation and be parted from your bestie for a minute or two, pick the same funnel!
• Stay in the same funnel you entered, your time at one end and position at the other end must match, switching funnels causes us all sort of trouble!
• If you are asked for your name by one of the volunteers in the finish funnel (the number checker), please provide it and keep moving through – we use this to check that everything stays in sync, and that you are all getting the correct times.
• As you approach Finish Tokens, hold your hand out, palm up as it’s easier to drop the token onto your hand than put it between your finger & thumb, especially with cold hands.
• Everyone take a finish token. If you aren’t registered or don’t want to scan just drop it back in a bucket next to a scanner; you may
Be part of something amazing!
We are desperately short of volunteers for New Year's Day!
To be more exact, we have all areas covered, except one.
But it's a biggie: the funnel!
Please get in touch via our email if you would like to hand out tokens or be a funnel manager.
Fantastic Christmas event today with over 1200 participants including one or two costumes and a few santa hats!
A ginormous thank you to all the elves (volunteers) that made this such a special event and we were so happy to see such huge numbers for the festive cheer!
Results will follow - however sprout peeling, parsnip buttering and having a wonderful Christmas Day takes priority!
We hope you all have a lovely day and we look forward to seeing you at the next parkrun!!
Another fabulous parkrun at Milton Keynes this morning. Well done to all 795 participants who took part in the event today, you are all awesome! A big thank you as always to our volunteers, you are all superstars and we couldn’t run this event without you. Thank you so much for being so understanding and patient, as we tested out the longer double funnel this morning ready for the Christmas Day event. We are still looking for volunteers for 25th and 27th , so if you are able to please email in and we can add you to the roster. We are looking forward to seeing so many of you for the festive parkrun coming up , but for everyone hope you have a very Merry Christmas 🤶 🎅🏼☃️❄️🎄!
