Parkrun will continue in Cobar after the event was cancelled earlier this month due to a lack of volunteers willing to take on official roles.
Cobar’s Parkrun event is part of a global community movement that encourages people to get out and get active and walk or run 5km each Saturday morning.
The first Parkrun event in Cobar was held in May 2018 at the Newey, organised by then local resident, Tanya Gilbert, with 58 runners and walkers taking part.
It was the 307th Parkrun event to launch in Australia (there’s now 457 weekly events across Australia and more than 2,000 events running in 23 countries across six continents) with Cobar holding its 100th Parkrun in March last year.
Parkrun was cancelled in Cobar earlier this month due to a lack of volunteers.
Each event requires five volunteer officials to act as run director, timekeeper, scanner, half-way marshal and tail-walker.
A former Parkrun director, Amie Hill, who took over the role from Tanya Gilbert, said she was disappointed when she heard the news that Parkrun was being cancelled.
Amie called a meeting last Saturday in an effort to sign up more volunteers to ensure the weekly event would continue.
“A lot of work went into setting it up and it’s a great thing for the town,” Amie said.
“We get a lot of tourists passing through coming to Parkrun and we also get people travelling to Cobar specifically to participate in Parkrun as part of the Seven C’s challenge [where they compete at seven different Parkrun events starting with the letter ‘c’].”
At Saturday’s meeting, Trudy Griffiths put her hand up to take on the Cobar run director’s role.
“Ultimately because I didn’t want to see it fold,” Trudy told The Cobar Weekly.
“It’s a community event that I think we can grow and expand on.
“I registered in 2018 and haven’t been that active but it’s an event that I don’t want to see us lose,” she said.
Amie said she was thrilled Trudy has taken on the organiser’s role and is happy to support Trudy and the event going forward.
The meeting discussed ways to get more locals and local groups involved in helping out and also participating.
