Congratulations to all who organised or took part in today's NHS70 Parkrun

The 70th birthday celebrations for the NHS began this morning in fine style with NHS 70 Parkruns around the country.

This was a Cumbrian initiative which went National: here is Nicola Jackson who had the idea and was the director for this morning's event in Carlisle - one of hundreds of such events around the country.

There were about 360 participants in the Carlisle Parkrun this morning, supported by a large number of wonderful volunteers who prepared and stewarded the event and provided water and cake afterwards!

As I explained in previous posts, the advice was to "Run, jog or walk" according to what is appropriate for your own health, and I had not done any running for forty years - my sport is swimming - so I decided to walk the 5,000 metre course, which took me an hour and three minutes. I finished about two minutes behind one of the local NHS's clinical directors and two minutes ahead of another, both of whom had also decided to walk (no names, no pack drill) though the chairman of the CCG and the County Council's director of public health managed to run the event!

My wife suggested that if I was going to walk the course I should have put a bag with 200 leaflets on my shoulder and mimed putting one through a letter box every 25 metres and it would have been exactly like the exercise I got most evenings during the three election campaigns which took up the first half of last year (except that Chance Park in Carlisle is a lot flatter than much of Copeland!)

Superb event and congratulations to all those who took part and to Nicola and all the organisers and volunteers.