Two goodgym members volunteered to support Woking parkrun on the day of the 8th anniversary of the 1st Woking parkrun. The brother and sister dream team, James and Kirsty;

James, carried out the course safety check prior to dashing off to compete in the Bordon Brutal 10K, and Kirsty Marshaling for the first time at the adult park run. Wayne was also competing in the Bordon Brutal with James. Results for them further on....

The birthday event turned out to be highly memorable for another more unfortunate reason. One of the run participants experienced a medical emergency whilst partaking in the run. Thankfully, another participant, who is an ICU Consultant, performed CPR on the unwell man.

The RD who led with a calm head throughout, appeared quickly with a defibrillator. Another 1st time Marshal had already rung 999 for assistance. By the time the ambulance services took the patient to hospital, the unwell man was responsive and able to speak.

The parkrun was quickly abandoned. Credit and gratitude must go to all of the volunteers, who quickly organised themselves to provide dignity and respect to the man by shielding him from members of the public, and also with directing parkrun participants and other park users away from the scene.

Recognising that there was still much to be done, Kirsty quickly organised a new task force, made up of the other volunteers and our NSRC friends to have the course cleared of equipment, packed and tidied away.

A personal request, please make sure when you take part in any event you have some form of ID on your person, even if it just your name and ICE tagged on to your shoelaces. Until the unwell participant was responsive, those first responders helping him did not know his name or who his ICE contact is.

We hope that the runner in question makes a full recovery, and we send our best wishes to him as he recovers from his frightening experience. Thank you to everyone who helped today. Although it sounds glib, when it is said that parkrun couldn't be put on safely without volunteers, today proved that to be true.

Happy 8th birthday Woking parkrun.

James cleared the Bordon Brutal 10K in 71 minutes, with thankfully no injuries and Wayne, who is returning from injury cleared the Bordon Brutal 5k in 43 minutes. Well done boys!