Hill runner Joe Symonds has been making the most of the current constraints on normal activity this year. He has been running up the three hills of Dumbreck, Cort-ma Law and Lecket Hill to raise money for the Scottish Association for Mental Health.
In 2020 he ran up his local hill Dumbreck an impressive 50 times but decided to set the bar a lot higher in 2021 by making it 100 and adding in Cort-ma Law and Lecket Hill. He completed his challenge at dawn on boxing day with 12 hardy souls in typical Campsie winter weather.
This has resulted in some impressive statistics for his year in review on Strava – 4,537km with 187,940m climb (that’s 530m a day!) and he spent 417 hours running. Fortunately for him the Scottish Hill Running championships was reduced to 4 races (normally 6). This helped him take the Scottish title while focusing on his main 2021 challenge.
Joe has raised over £6,000 in memory of his friend Polly. Find out more and donate here
Tom Owens looks like he has recovered from his win in the Cape Verde ultra race by taking the first finisher spot at the Southport parkrun in 16:45 just one second ahead of 2nd place.
Peter Avent also managed a first finish in the Ecos Parkrun, Ballymena in a PB and fast time of 15:13 missing out on the course record by 6 seconds.
The Pollok parkrun is always a popular Christmas Day parkrun and it was the same this year. Numbers were still affected by Covid with the total finishers of 351 still 50% lower than Christmas Day in 2019. Kenny Richmond was 8th and first M50 with an impressive 83.4% age grade.
Other Christmas Day parkrunners were
Hanley
32 Simon Gay 23:38
Springburn
28 Emma Purdie 23:58
Montrose
37 Melanie Hayes 27:33
Check out your nearest New Years Day parkrun here
More photos of Joe’s Campsie challenge…
