Hello again dear parkrunners,

There was a noteworthy thing which happened in Tampere parkrun. Cass Castleton has not only finished 289 parkruns but he is also the first person to have finished all parkrun countries now Finland included. It was great to meet and chat with you before and after the event. Oh, and we don't do it often but it was great to hear that you enjoyed the private parkrun jet taking you from Helsinki to Tampere. Thank you for the cakes also that you brought for the voluneers. We enjoyed those! Good luck on your journey to Malaysia where parkrun is starting 14-April-2018.

Next week we will have a runner with t-shirt in memory of Cass's late son who passed away exactly a year ago on the 14th. We are so sorry for your loss and are honored to participate in this!

After needing to cancel our event previous week we were a bit worried about the condition of the route this week too. In Arboretum park one would have needed either a rowing boat or skates depending on the weather to finish the route. During the week sun (yes it does show itself in Finland sometimes too) had melted most of the snow and ice from the Ratina lake front so we decided to use spare-spare route. And it turned out to be a real success among volunteers and parkrunnes. We run same out and back route three times, which meant that no matter where you were on the route you always had friendly faces (and backs) to see and hands to high five with. This is definitely a spare route to remember!

Otherwise the parkrun was again as parkrun always is: Great. Good number of volunteers (Elviira HEINO, Helena REINIKAINEN, Johanna RIIPPI, Leena HEINO, Olli STRÖM, Riikka TAIVALMÄKI, Sari HELMINEN) and 42 participants ensured that we had enjoyable morning. 5 first timers, (welcome all!) and good number of PB's (congratulations!). Juhani Yli-Marttila kept fastest pace running under 20 minutes. We most likely had our record walking time as well as Jenni Lahtinen from Ikurin Vire walked the route in 31 minutes. Congratulations to both!

And we also had our regular participant Tobias in his shorts again. We too are hoping for the weather to get warmer.

One can not go wrong with ending the story short with pictures taken in Sanna's Cafe full of parkrunners. See you next week as we are celebrating double birthday for our two backbone volunteers Johanna and Ulla.