Parkrun is phenomenally successful in getting people of all ages and abilities out of the door early on a Saturday morning to run 5k in their local park, writes Terry Bewes.

Parkruns are free, timed 5k events, not races and are held at 9am every Saturday morning in 431 locations around the UK. Now Parkrun has come to Seaton!

Last Saturday, a cool, but bright windy morning was the third week of this event and saw 115 people taking part.

The course is almost entirely flat consisting of two laps of the esplanade. The only unusual and challenging aspect of the course is the short stretch of pebbles along the beach at one end of each lap and a short stretch at the finish.

There has been a Sidmouth Running Club member in each of the three events so far. In the first, Suzi Rockey ran 27:43 and in the second Jane Hemsworth ran 24:52; Carol Hounsell who only joined the club a couple of months ago and ran with the two mile group also ran in the second event in a time of 32:19.

Now wearing the club’s Mighty Green vest, she has over the last couple of weeks moved up to the four mile group and then knocked almost three minutes off her time last Saturday by running a personal best of 29:37. Rob Edwards also ran last Saturday in 23:47 with his step-daughter Katy 29:15 and 10-year-old grandson Stanley 29:00, both of whom ran more slowly than usual, but then the views are a distraction.

Another nice feature about Parkrun is that the results give everyone an age/sex adjusted score so that times can be easily compared, therefore we can see that Jane Hemsworth has the best performance so far for a Sidmouth runner.