There was a fair contingent of club runners at Victoria Park on Saturday, most heading to Queens Playing Fields afterwards to watch the Masters International.. In the ladies event, Valerie McDonough and Jill Aicken were 2nd and 3rd in 21:42 and 21:55 respectively behind the unattached in – form Naomi Broughton. Shaun O’Loughlin ran his first parkrun in 22:15 while Sarah Benton ran 22:41, David Balmer 22:50 and David Montgomery 23:12. At Belfast Waterworks Paul Curran, who has been frustrated by injury in getting his second athletics career off the ground, ran 21:59 for 36th place.
Saturday also saw the opening of the first parkrun to be held in the Republic of Ireland when the Malahide event got under way. No doubt, there will be a similar explosive growth to that in the North, where two years after the opening of the Waterworks event, there are currently seven.