Athletics: Blind runners enjoy Barking parkrun

Blind runners Severine Renard and Chris Blackabee with others at Barking parkrun (pic Emdad Rahman) Archant

Barking parkrun welcomed two blind runners for the last event of 2018.

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Severine Renard, from Liege in Belgium, completed the course alongside pacer Andy Hiller, while Chris Blackabee was paced by Derek Petrie.

Renard said: “The atmosphere was friendly. I have been a parkrun fan since 2012 and my best time is 27.50. Thank you to Andy and the team at Barking for taking care of me.”

Blackabee added: “I do like to travel a bit and have been doing parkrun for 10 years. Barking is a great location and the fellow runners were very friendly. The course and the general pace felt good.”

*According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, over two million people in the UK live with sight loss.

Of these, around 360,000 are registered with their local authority as blind or partially sighted and it is predicted that by 2020 the number of people with sight loss with be over 2,500,000.