We headed over to Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors parkrun to help them with their third birthday and 150th event celebrations. It also happens that the RD was part of a parkrun WhatsApp community in, as were some of the other volunteers.
Edgbaston Reservoir, Rotton Park Rd, Birmingham, B16 0SG
You can read my previous post about Junior parkrun.
Facilities at Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors
- Plenty of street parking
- Also accessible on foot, bicycle, bus or train
- Unfortunately there are no toilets available
- Outdoor gym
- Water Activities (including Sailing Club)
- Red Shed has play area, learning domes, outdoor amphitheatre and cafe
Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors parkrun Course
Starting from the Rotten Park entrance to the reservoir it’s a 2km flat tarmac course.
1km out and back towards the sailing club. Some will recognised this as part of the 5k Edgbaston Reservoir parkrun course. Over a bridge and then they will see the mural.
Here there’s an orange turn around cone and the children head back to the finish. Once they have returned to where they started there is just a small split to the right onto some grass. It has cones leading the way to the finish and adults are asked to peel to the left at this point please.
Good course for a PB but obviously it is however shared with other users.
My Experience of Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors
It was easy to park and we arrived super early. We saw one of the volunteers getting lots of things from their car so we offered to help carry some equipment.
Obviously we were warmly greeted because they were people we already knew. It already looked so fabulous with birthday bunting already up.
Before the Junior parkrun
Next we headed to the briefing area where we hung bunting and blew up balloons. As children started arriving we were still tying balloons to bunting and I played some birthday music.
Vic introduced herself and gave out information to everyone. She told the volunteers that it would be different this week as all the marshals would be at the briefing before going to their posts.
The first timers briefing was done, then they all headed to the start and a main briefing was done – mostly about the 3 year celebration. Next they all headed back to the briefing area and Vic said some more stuff before I did my warm up.
Then the children headed to the start and I found my marshal post. Several people thanked me for the warm up.
Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors itself
A very fast young man was soon leading the way for the finishers and my marshal point was an excellent point for encouraging them on the final push. It was a little while before I realised I hadn’t even offered any power boosts!
Very few children didn’t want to hi five me after that. Some just already going so fast.
Afterwards the children went and scanned with my husband and one of the junior parkrun volunteers.
Before finally all celebrating with cake and goodies at the finish.
Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors Stats Over the Past Three Years
Some Stats Vic told us about over the past three years:
- 776 different young people have taken part
- Between them, they have completed parkrun 4035 times!
- This equals 8070km – or to put it a different way, the same distance as travelling all the way from London to Beijing (China), London to Vancouver (Canada), or travelling the whole length of Africa from north to south!
- Young people have spent a total of 49,630 minutes walking and running the course. Or in other words – 833 hours, 34 and a half days, or 5 weeks!
Volunteers
Over the past 3 years, 388 different people have volunteered at the event, over a total of 2590 times!
This means that altogether, they have given 2590 hours, which means 3.5 months of volunteering time! 3.5 months is also the time it takes to grow potatoes or tomatoes, or to incubate a baby lion cub – how amazing.
They never turn away volunteers but did ask if we were okay to allow Juniors to do the non-marshal roles. This also meant that there were even more people keeping children safe away from the reservoir.
Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors Stats Event 150
51 young people and their adults came to help us celebrate the birthday event and complete the course.
A particular well done to Amrita for completing her first ever parkrun today – welcome to the parkrun family, we hope you enjoyed it and look forward to seeing you again.
Welcome too to Imogen, Reuben and Freya who were visiting us from other events.
Finish Times
First boy was Michael in 7min 13s, and first girl was his sister Lina in 9min 20s. Well done to you both. They also both had the highest age gradings for each sex with 77.55% for Michael and 68.07% for Lina.
But as was reminded parkrun is not a race – and the most important is getting out there and enjoying it and trying your best. So a very big well done to ALL of the young people for getting out and being active this morning!
A phenomenal 19 “personal bests”
Finishing by Times at Edgbaston Reservoir Juniors Event 150
Incredibly all children completed the course within 21 minutes and 25 seconds.
- 50 of which were under 20 minutes
- 49 under 19 minutes
- 46 under 17
- 45 under 16
- 42 under 15
- 38 under 14
- 28 under 13
- 22 finished in 12 minutes and under – equivalent to a 30 minute adult parkrun
- 12 were under 11 minutes
- 9 under 10 minutes
- 2 under 9 minutes
Final Thoughts
It was an absolutely lovely day and it was fantastic to see that so many children (and their adults) had dressed up for the occasion. They joined in enthusiastically with my warm up – which was wonderful to watch back on Yi’s video.
Read about my other volunteering at Junior parkrun
We started our parkrun journey with Junior parkrun after reading about it on Sarah’s blog (MumofThreeWorld). You may also be interested in my previous post about Should children do parkrun?