THERE was a personal milestone for Fran Johnson who set her first ever personal best time.

She clocked 27mins 54secs in her 125th run at the Bolton event.

This week there were 259 runners, of whom 28 were first timers, 52 recorded new personal bests and representatives of 19 different athletics clubs took part.

Paul Thompson of Bury Athletic Club was first to cross the line followed by Paul Freary, who is from Bolton and runs for Belgrave Harriers, and Thomas Fletcher, while Catherine O'Dwyer (Bolton United Harriers & AC), Laura Evans (Bury AC) and Maria Lowe (Horwich RMI Harriers) were their female counterparts.

Rudolf Maciejkowicz (81.32 per cent), Eileen Royle (78.10 per cent) and Sean McMyler (77.77 per cent) scored the day’s highest age gradings.

Since Bolton parkrun started on February 5, 2011, 4,758 different runners – including participants from 218 athletics clubs – have completed a combined 39,504 runs covering a total distance of 197,520k, and there have been 7,659 new personal best times set.

Other rounded run counts were hit by Anthony Powers (20 runs), Claire Merritt and Joanne Nelson (30), Claire Fairclough and Sara Green (60), Jeff Pendlebury (70), Brian Mather (110), Kath Henderson (130), Brian Tull (150), and lastly, Anthony Johnson and Neil Bonnar on 160 runs.

Adrian Merritt's new time of 20:50 represents an overall improvement of more than three minutes during his 35 runs at Bolton.

Rachel Gosling set her first personal best for 20 months with Saturday's 26:35 run, a few seconds short of a full five-minute improvement since she started almost two years ago.

Someone else who has waited a long time for a new PB is Bill Vickers whose time of 26:51 on Saturday was his fastest since June 2013, while Tom Gleaves has waited even longer, his 24:18 on Saturday his first PB since May 2013.

As ever, there was a healthy contingent of volunteers with 23 people giving up their time to fulfil a variety of vital roles to ensure the event could take place.

These people are crucial to the success of Bolton parkrun, and if you are free to help this Saturday morning get in touch with the organisers on Facebook, Twitter or e-mail BoltonOffice@parkrun.com.

Runner of the week: Helen Harper.

A century of parkruns (99 of them at Bolton) sees Helen join the 100 club.