By Max Davies
AFTER months of trials and tribulations, Seymour is finally ready to go for its first-ever community parkrun event.
Dubbed the Goulburn River Trail parkrun to avoid clashing with the Seymour Park event in Manchester, England, the parkrun will officially kick off at 8am this Saturday – with up to 100 people expected to take part.
Open to people of all ages and abilities, parkrun is a weekly, timed, non-competitive walk, run or jog designed to encourage community members to get out and be active while enjoying the scenery.
Race director Peter Nunn said the Goulburn River Trail parkrun had been supported by a ‘massive response’ and was excited to finally get the Seymour event underway.
“Like the song says ‘if it’s five o’clock somewhere in the world’, at eight o’clock on Saturday morning there’ll be a parkrun happening somewhere in the world,” he said.
“We had four trials and there was a fairly good response … we had 45 participants turn up to do the trials and out of that, there was approximately 19 from the metropolitan area, which was outstanding.”
There are currently 476 parkrun locations in Australia alone, with participants often travelling to different parkrun locations outside of their communities – even internationally – to experience a wide variety of events.
The Seymour parkrun will use five kilometres of the Goulburn River Trail, beginning in Lions Park on Manners Street, before travelling 2.5 kilometres along the trail and then turning around.
Mr Nunn, who was tasked with preparing the trail to meet parkrun standards, said the course was ‘going well’ ahead of the big day.
“It’s drying out, everything’s as it should be. The river has gone back to its ‘normal level’, which is well away from where it was about a week ago,” he said.
“People will turn up from Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, wherever, and we get a bit of a buzz out of that because you come up to Seymour and that puts the town on the map. That’s a great thing that we need and hopefully it’ll get bigger and better, and we can improve the course even more.”
Healthy Kids Mitchell, a group aimed at encouraging children in the northern Mitchell Shire to be healthy and involved in the community, has been at the forefront of organising the event for the region.
Group member Lucy Linton said after the effort put into getting the parkrun off the ground, organisers were excited to be able to offer the event to the community.
“We’re hoping to get as many people down as we can, we’re always encouraging volunteers for the event and there’s always a volunteer role for anyone that wants to be involved,” she said.
“We’re very excited to finally be here, there’s been a lot of work up to this point to get things happening but we are definitely looking forward to it. It’s going to be a great day.”
For more information on volunteering with parkrun, email goulburnrivertrailseymour@parkrun.com.au.
To register as a participant, visit www.parkrun.com.au.
