Rolling up for a circus turn at Parkrun

There was a colourful gathering at the weekly Snowden Field Parkrun in Crowland on Saturday.
Among the mix of almost 100 attendees were strongmen, jugglers, knife throwers and some clowns – not all from the nearby circus apparently!
Despite the damp grass and thick cloud cover, there was a higher attendance than normal, due to neighbouring events at Ferry Meadows, in Peterborough, and Boston being called off. The 92 people who crossed the line brought the event closer to a major milestone with 2,562 runners now having completed 9,866 finishes over the 5K course in its five-year history so far.
The 175th event saw first-timers take the first three places, led by Harry Ledger in 19 minutes 10 seconds.
First local club runner home was Adam Caress, of Halmer Harriers, in fourth place (21:39), with teammate Mike O’Connor (23:02), also in the top ten.
Other Halmer runners were Janet Strickland, 52nd (33:37) and Simon Eldridge, 79th (40:52).
Over at Wisbech, Daniel Hollis clocked 25:11 to take 30th place, while Steve Lane came 40th (23:39) at the Skipton Parkrun in Yorkshire.
Even further afield, Kathryn Chapman (36:32) and Jayne Pell (38:25) took 342nd and 357th places respectively of 435 runners in an English invasion of the Zuiderpark Parkrun in Den Haag, in the Netherlands.
Sunday saw several Halmer Harriers among 297 runners taking on the Deepings 10K.
Sian Brown finished in 57:08 for 162nd place, with Andrew Presst 175th, finishing in 58:12. Others included Andy Hooker 210th (1:02:25), Bridgitte Seymour 211th (1:02:31), Debbie Preston, 235th (1:05:41) and Janet Strickland, 238th (1:05:59).