Organised by the Stroke Organistion, the Resolution Run, or #ResRun as we were encouraged to refer to it as, returned once again to the beautiful setting of Swindon's Lydiard Park. OK, I may be a little biased here because Lydiard is the home of my local parkrun, but in the welcome Spring Sunshine that greeted us today the park was looking sublime, and a joy to be running in

This was the first time I had taken part in the event as a runner, my Wife had previously competed in 2016, and this year I joined her to help her around her first ever 10km distance. Competitors had a choice of either taking on 1, 2 or 3 laps of the course around the park (the same registration fee applied to all distances) which made up the 5k, 10k or 15k distances, For your entry fee you received a Stroke Association branded Tech Shirt to wear in the race, and a finishers medal at the end. Medals were personalised with the various distances on the ribbons.

Parking was plentiful in the grounds of the car park, and even with a large dog show and junior football competition taking place on the same day, there was room for all (again a bit biased with reporting on the smooth parking facilities as I had volunteered to marshall the car park!). There was a charge for parking, but not excessive.

Most people had pre registered and received numbers and shirt prior to the race, but there was also day entries available, a small queue for these were being promptly dealt with. No bag drop facilities, but with your car only being parked a few hundred metres from the start/finish this wasn't really an issue. A choir entertained runners prior to the start and a zumba style warm up got everybody ready to run. The pre race briefing was a little hard to hear, due to only having a very small poratble speaker and microphone, but I feel that most got the message OK.

All 3 distances started at the same time, and various paced runners started from where they found themselves lined up, so a few problems early on with faster runners trying to overtake slower runners/walkers, but a wide start area avoided any major hiccups here. It was an impressive sight to see hundreds of runners, all clad in the matching purple shirts snaking around the course

A gently undulating course around the park, mostly on gravel path, but a few sections on grass, was well marshalled by cheerful marshalls and followed part of the usual parkrun course, In took in all the glory of the park, lake and stately home. Small pockets of families and friends of runners gathered at various points on the course to cheer eveybody on.Water stations were promised at every 2,5kms, but in reality only one was set up at 5km (and 10km for the 3 lappers), the one lap runners would not have seen this as they would have already headed off the finish before hand and 10k runners would only pass once. In the hot weather this may have been a problem, but I did not witness any issues to report.

The race was not chip timed, just one large time clock at the finish, but this was not about winners and times today, it was all about raisng funds for the Stroke Association and raising awareness of the condition, there were a number of stroke survivors who bravely took on the challenge today.

Medals, banana's and much needed water were quickly handed out at the end of the race.

A really enjoyable event and for a good cause as well, worth supporting in future years. A few small problems to sort out but well organised apart from that, and for the record my wife completed her first 10k in about 12 mins faster than she had hoped for, so one happy runner here.