The Future

We would like to restart this event at some stage in the future.
If you have any questions please contact us. Thank you.
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Aston Hall Parkrun 04/05/24

A sea of purple t-shirts, crisp air and the relief of surviving the hills! This week the City of Birmingham Striders (COBS), a local Birmingham running club based in the Jewellery Quarter, did a volunteer take over. It’s the day before the Great Birmingham Run, so many of our runners were resting their legs and instead did various volunteer roles, like marshalling, event set up, first timers welcome and time keeping. I joined COBS around 3 years ago when I first moved to Birmingham and since then have found a love for Parkrun and have been welcomed into the wonderful Birmingham running community. I never thought I’d be waking up at 7.30am on a Saturday morning to go running, but now I love ticking off new Parkruns (and there are many to choose from in Birmingham). 

This was my first time at Aston Hall - the route is two large laps of one field, followed by two and half smaller laps of another field, on a mixture of grass, graveled path and dirt paths. You do need to keep track of how many laps you have done to make sure you go in the right direction. It is hilly (think cross country X park run), but the large hill is made a little bit less horrible by the view of Aston Hall, a Jacobean style building built between 1618 and 1635, as you run up. Of course the Villa fans can take a peek at the stadium as they go past too. 

Overall, it’s a relatively new and small Parkrun. Event 22 had 67 finishers, many of whom were celebrating a mile stone, doing some parkrun tourism or joining Parkrun for the first time. We had 57 first timers. Congratulations to…

  • Geraldine Moffat for the age grade course record.
  • Calum Upton, Karen Seiles & Jubeda Momoniat on their Aston Hall PBs. 
  • Felan Hogan & Fiona Gregson on their new Parkrun PBs.

It’s an interesting parkrun for people wanting to try something a bit different and challenge themselves. Volunteers are always needed to ensure Parkruns can keep going every week, so please consider signing up - volunteer | Aston Hall parkrun! 

Thanks to this week's volunteers

  • Amy HOOPER Anthony MCMELLON Balal QURESHI Calum UPTON Daniel CURTIS Darash MANTRI David NUNEZ BECERRA Eleanor JONES Hope MCMELLON James CORDEN Kasia NIEDZWIEDZKA Kevin SYLVESTER Matthew ALLEN Nadia MAALIN Nathan RICHARDSON Naved AKHTAR Roxana ISTVANOVSZKI Sam PICKERING Thomas STRANGE Umesh PAREKH
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Visitor’s Run Report Saturday 20th January

Aston Hall is a relatively new parkrun which had its first event back in October 2023. It takes place in the grounds of Aston Hall, a Grade 1 Listed Building, the Jacobean House built between 1618 and 1635. What a privilege to participate in a parkrun close to such a historic stunning building.
Myself and wife Ann are regular parkrun tourists from Albert in Middlesbrough. We both attended to re-complete the Great Halls of Fire. One of many Challenges, on the Running Achievements App.
The 'Great Halls of Fire' Challenge, 12 Hall's
Aston Hall, Chadderton Hall, Conyngham Hall, Croxteth Hall, Cusworth Hall, Doddington Hall, Houghton Hall, Lytham Hall, Normandy Hall, Oakwell Hall, Perry Hall and Wollaton Hall. 
The First Timers Welcome was by today's Run Director, Aine ASTBURY, which was attended by nearly all of today's participants, 91 from 99 finishers. In 15 years of parkrunning, I've only ever seen as many first timers at inaugural events. What a great atmosphere was created with lots of visitors, many wearing Yellow Cow Bob Hats & Buffs.
Although it was quite chilly and windy this morning, the course was in very good condition. It's a mainly trail parkrun route, but road shoes were fine. Some cracking performances today, well done to everyone, whether you run fast, run slow, walked or volunteered.
A special well done to Jacob WARNER, who not only got a course PB today, he also got a time of 22:22, a Palindrome Challenge in one of the apps. Also, well done to Jacob WARNER, who also got a course PB, with a time of 26:47
Welcome to Natasha OCALLAGHAN and Fiona GREGSON who both completed their first ever parkrun anywhere and chose Aston Hall as their debut location. Well done, and I really hope you enjoyed this morning and will return soon.
A huge thank you must go to each and every volunteer. Please remember that parkrun can't go ahead without them. There's lots of roles before, during and after parkrun including pre-event set up placing cones, erecting the finish funnel, course check etc. Also, if you're fast enough you could barcode scan after your run. If you haven't volunteered already, please consider giving a go, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Any training needed is provided. Today's team did absolutely brilliantly as all seemed to go very well. So much that we received our result text by 10:57am.
 
Ann was one of today's volunteer parkwalkers, and took a few photos. Hope you like them. 

We both really enjoyed our visit to Aston Hall parkrun this morning. Free parking very close to the Start Area, a very welcoming volunteer team and lovely, if not testing parkrun course.

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Event number 9 13/1/24



A run in the sun 
Firstly a massive, massive thank you to todays RD  and marshals who had been co-opted from parkruns in the area to enable event 9 at Aston Hall parkrun to go ahead .
We travelled from Leicester to take part, one on our tourist list since before Christmas.
The venue was lovely, Aston Hall looking good in the early morning sun. The park was opposite Aston Villa Football Ground .
RD gave the detailed briefing them after a 3,2,1 off we went, crunching our way through a carpet of leaves. The course comprised of two large laps and then, after crossing a closed  road, 2 smaller laps , mainly off road with an occasional path .
If you get chance please consider volunteering at this event.
Good luck for the future Aston Hall

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Aston Chiller

17 of us left Chipping Sodbury at 6:30 am for the 90 mile drive north to the event after a wee and a tea stop at Frankley Services. We were met by another 20+ tourists we know from our parkrun tourist group Airey Airways. Being quite a new event you do always get a lot of tourists and today was no exception. 7 of the record 154 attendance had been here before and the rest were first timers and only 1 person was doing their first-ever parkrun. I hope Sussan Downes keeps up her parkrun journey.
My wife Deb Airey did the first-timers briefing and being a Villa fan she loved it as did your visitors. The limited free parking was brilliant and no height restriction meant our minibus had no issues.
With 1/3 of parkruns being called off due to freezing temperatures, we feel honoured and lucky that the stand-in RD went ahead with event 7.
The start line was covered in leaves and as the run got underway the noise of crunching underfoot was something I had never experienced at a parkrun before. The sun started to come out during the run and with the mix of frost and foliage, there are some beautiful photos of today's run.
The main reason I chose this event was to complete a slightly crazy challenge I set myself a few years ago, I wanted to connect a string of events from Lands End to John o'Groats on the Chrome Extension Voronoi map, for those not as obsessed as me it is a map of the world broken down into areas that a parkrun covers in relation to other parkruns. The chrome extension colours the events in green as can be found on this link for running challenges https://running-challenges.co.uk/
I should have completed my challenge last week at Thurso which is the most northerly parkrun on mainland UK but when Aston started it sliced a chunk out of my map, it is not the first time this has happened over the last 4 years but I was so close to finishing last week.
Some Stats
Today's first finisher was Stacey Hawkins, the first time a female has bagged first place. It is also a new female course record as well as the Age Grage record for VW40-44. Second female was Suzy Farrell and third was Kinga Nawrocka.
First male was Sam Starkey with 21:32 which in contrast the slowest first male finisher so far, although I think he took it easy today as he is a sub 20 min runner. Second male was James Whitehouse who is only 6 runs away from his 250th, third was Matthew Wilkinson. The first ten finishers were all first-timers.
Stacey was the top age grader with 73.46% , second was Jean Dalby in the VW65-69 range with 67.80% and third was Dave L Burton on 65.63% VM55-50.
The most runniest runner was Neil Tiley on 563 runs, then John Gray on 538, Katie Cotton  on 528 and Paul Chapman on 510. 27 runners/walkers have a 250 shirt.
There were no official milestones today.
In today's run, there were 5 V250 shirts of which 4 were in our group. 19 V100s, 28 V50s, and 17 V25s - That's not far off 50% of the field owning a milestone T.
14 of our group volunteered today and it just goes to show that you can help and still get your run. There are so many roles you can do from Event Day course check, First Timers Briefing, Event set up, close down, pacer, guide runner, barcode scanner (for the quicker runners), park walker, tail walker and even sitting at home writing the report!
A huge thanks to all the volunteers for standing in the freezing cold and for making this event happen. I have never run that close to a premiership football ground on a parkrun and being a Toon fan it wasn't as distressing as it could have been!
Andy Airey
A108317
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