First Park Run picks the perfect weather
NO matter what city or town you might find yourself in, when you see the words ‘Park Run’ you’ll know there’s a 5km jog in store come 9.30am on a Saturday.
Listowel became Ireland’s 100th location to offer the event and more than 200 runners turned up at the town park on Saturday in the kind of weather that makes outdoor event organisers salivate.
“We were thrilled with the inaugural Listowel Park Run. I was conscious of seeing it established here after taking over as chairman of the Kerry Sports Partnership and it couldn’t have gone better. Listowel has, after all, one of the finest town parks in the country,” Jimmy Deenihan said.
One of the other finest town parks in the country - Tralee - figured heavily in day one of the Listowel event. “Tralee Park Run has been running very successfully for some time now and Siobhán Kearney and Tony Higgins there were a huge help in establishing Listowel.”
US native Tim Seagal is meanwhile ‘event director’ of the Park Run in Listowel.
“The key thing is that the park run is a community-based event. It’s the participants themselves who chose event directors, marshals, time keepers and so on. We are also unique in the land in that the town park in Listowel is floodlit allowing joggers to run by night and, we have the wonderful facility of the Community Centre at the start and end of the event which runners can use.”