Arriving earlier than usual at East Park this week I was surprised that there didn't seem to be many runners hanging around beside the car park. Everything else seemed to be normal, with Gill making sure the volunteers knew what their roles were for that morning . .

but of course, runners being such compliant souls, almost everyone had gathered outside the Pavilion Café, ready for the Hull parkrun 1st Birthday presentations . .

Paul spoke very well about parkrun, reminding us that had it not been for Paul Sinton-Hewitt, and East Park, there would be no parkrun and we'd have nothing to do on a Saturday morning. He thanked Dave, who has turned up in all weathers almost every week to take his excellent photos of parkrun, and went on to thank all the Volunteers for giving up their time so generously . . click here to see Dave's photos . .

so it was fitting that the first presentation was of the Tremere Trophy for Volunteer of the Year, which went to Teresa, who has volunteered an amazing 44 times

then it was the turn of the Motivators and the IT Magician to each receive a round of applause . . their contribution to Hull parkrun has been freely and happily given and exceeds that which is expected, and Paul and Gill wanted to say thank you . .

Tracey and Adrian both use their parkruns to encourage others to faster times . . PB's if possible . . even though doing so means that they don't record times that reflect their own abilities. And when they've done all that, they help with returning the parkrun equipment back to the car park. It's folk like Tracey and Adrian who make running in general, and parkrun in particular, such great things to be a part of . .

Simon, meanwhile comes all the way from Lincoln to be at parkrun. His son Ian currently holds the Hull parkrun course record. I know from my own experience that parkrun laptops can be temperamental (nothing to do with operator error, obviously) and Simon has often rescued the Hull results so that we all have a record of our runs. So if it weren't for Simon's efforts, many of us might still be wondering if that run that felt so good really was a pb or not . .

Mandy was clearly thrilled to be the Most Improved parkrunner of the Year . . she's now 17 minutes and 23 seconds quicker than she was after her first parkrun . . and Mandy ran 23 pb's in 40 parkruns . .

Craig received the Trophy for Most Runs (46) and Phill the one for the Most Wins (14) . .

Rebecca received the Gazelle Cup for being the Junior Female points winner, with 1,684 points from 17 parkruns . . and the Gazelles all lined up to present it to her . .

Joshua was awarded the CLS Cup for being the Junior Male points winner, with 2.467 points from 34 parkruns . . Carole won the Friends of East Park Cup for being the Female points winner, with 4,415 points from 42 parkruns and Shaun won the Male equivalent with 3,701 points from 29 runs. Finally, Tracey said a few words on behalf of all Hull parkrunners, to thank Gill and Paul for all their hard work, enthusiasm and encouragement over the past 12 months . .

here's a few photos of the front of the 196 parkrunners . . it's the biggest attendance East Park has yet seen . .

and here's Dave, waiting patiently upstream for parkrun to start so he can start taking his photos . .

I carried a small camera around with me and although many of the photos I took were out of focus because I was breathing so heavily I couldn't keep the camera still, here are a few reasonable shots . .

how have they got over there already whilst I'm still only here? Sometimes I think I must be in a parallel universe and there are actually 2 Hull parkruns, only one of them started a couple of minutes before the one I'm taking part in . .

looking up along Ferens Boating Lake at the runners disappearing into the distance . .

here's our view of Dave . . and the view of me that Dave had next time around (thanks for the photo,  Dave)

a couple of nice views from the second lap . .

and at last, the queue to register - I must have finished running by now then . . and Gill hard at work with some new parkrunners who hadn't registered yet . .

"I've had one of those, think I'll have one of these next" . . and here's Di, Mark and Eileen enjoying having finished . .