[Lifestyle] how the weekly runs became a phenomenon – and are now coming back

[HiTLeR]

 

On an overcast Saturday morning on 2 October 2004, 13 people got together in Bushy Park, south-west London, to go for a run. A 5km run. The organizer, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, was at a difficult time in his life. “I was unable to run due to injury,” he remembers, “and many of my personal and professional relationships had broken down. I was at a low point. ”

The run became a regular weekly event; when more people joined in, Sinton-Hewitt and his friends would gather afterwards to collate the runners’ times over coffee. “Really, I wanted to get together with my friends, even though I couldn’t run,” says Sinton-Hewitt, now 60. “It was always about bringing people together, always about the coffee.”

A couple of years later, a second Time Trial, as it was then known, was started, not far away on Wimbledon Common. More followed, in England, Wales, Scotland and Zimbabwe, where Sinton-Hewitt was born.

By early this year, parkrun, as it was renamed, comprised 2,237 weekly events (1,863 Saturday 5k runs, 374 Sunday 2k junior versions) in 22 countries including Russia, Malaysia, Canada and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). All were organized and presided over by local volunteers wearing hi-vis vests. The format is the same everywhere: it's free, you register, print a barcode, turn up, run, jog or walk the course. Later you get an email or a text with your time. Since the beginning, 4,430,272 people have completed 61,042,282 parkruns. That’s 183,682,350 miles in total - or roughly from Bushy Park to the sun and back.

 

And then, in March, coronavirus stopped everything. Within weeks, parkrun was canceled worldwide. This was no time for hundreds, or even thousands, of people to be clustering together.

There are almost as many reasons for doing a parkrun as there are people doing them. To get fitter, to lose weight, to beat last week's time, to beat someone else, for the camaraderie, for the community, for that coffee afterwards, to see people, to escape from people, to exercise the dog, to exorcise the black dog - or at least to outrun it, keep a step ahead of its jaws. It’s about inclusiveness, wellbeing and creating a healthier, happier planet.

“Parkrun is a fantastic event for the older female runner,” says Annie Ross, 69, an artist and longtime runner in Maidstone, Kent. She was one of many Guardian readers who responded to a call-out asking for parkrun stories. “We are all in need of exercise,” she continues, “and you can see achievement, whatever level you run at. I love the idea of coming out regularly on a Saturday morning, and seeing friends and neighbors all taking part. ” Annie has had Covid-19 and took a long time to recover, but missed her Saturday 5k runs so much that in the past few weeks she has completed three “(not) parkruns”, running her local course on her own in her own time .

 

For Sammy Doublet, 17, a sixth-form student in Brighton, it is all about running as fast as possible and trying to beat as many people as possible. “It’s my deep-rooted competitiveness that drew me to parkrun,” he says.

Worried about her fitness in her late 50s, Janice Bell in Southsea “was instantly hooked and it grew into something close to an obsession. I was closing in on my 200th parkrun when lockdown happened; I have run in more than 50 different locations, including parkruns in New Zealand, Japan and France. ” Since it became possible to meet up with others, Janice has been joining a group of friends for an informal run, followed by breakfast together. “Almost as good as the real thing, but not quite,” she says. "I am desperate for it to restart."