An Ode to Parkrun

New Year’s resolutions. Weight loss journeys. Fitness kicks. Meditation. Everyone has a reason for wanting to exercise, whether they’re driven by motives of result or satisfaction, but those just starting out may need a tactic to maintain motivation from week to week.

I was at one time one of those people, unable to muster the willpower to commit to any exercise routine. Many attempts were short-lived.

Then one day, after years of trying and failing to make any exercise stick, I was introduced to what would eventually become one of my greatest obsessions — parkrun.

Welcome to parkrun

Saturday no longer exists outside of parkrun. Saturday is parkrun day.

Parkrun is a collective network of five kilometer runs, taking place every Saturday at 9am in hundreds of locations across the UK and other countries around the world. Each event is free to attend, run by community-based volunteers, and the results for each attending runner are calculated and released via parkrun’s website and their app.

As of April 2025, 23 countries are actively hosting parkrun events, with over 2,000 individual parkrun locations and over nine million registered users. It’s a whopping community – one, and that played a massive part in immediately catching my interest.

A social outing that includes movement instead of a solitary jaunt at the gym? Sign me up.

Humble beginnings

It began with a social media post. Rather, it began with an onslaught of posts from a friend of mine and my dad’s — Caroline.

Caroline was a volunteer at her local course in Northampton, welcoming first timers and showing them the ropes. She also had a penchant for bombarding social media with constant encouragementcalls for new runners.

On a whim, my dad and I finally decided to  try our first parkrun at ourthe local park to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe Caroline was onto something.

It was New Year’s Eve in 2022, and winter that year was a cold one.

To give you a better understanding of my utter lack of experience with running, I stupidly decided to rock up wearing a pair of’ll share with you my outfit of choice for that day — jeans and a button-down shirt. I was, to say the least, ill-equipped to run. 

My dad, meanwhile, had tried on several occasions to get into the unrelated “Couch to 5K” program in his own time. Try as he might, the process never seemed to stick. 

I’m not sure what madness compelled ushim to finally answer Caroline’s frequent bids for running, but he did. 

Despite the frigid temperatures and our minimallack of running experience, we resolved to have fun at the very leastthat day. As it turned out, that’s exactly what parkrun catered to.

We were immediately struck by a sense of camaraderie — more than 200 people had dragged themselves out of bed on this festive day, each of them linked by the same, slightly insane purpose of running a 5k before 10am. Everyone was friendly and open to chatting about their parkrun journeys; some runners had even travelled from overseas just to be a part of a different parkrun group. 

Imagine travelling the world just to do a 5k with a group of people you’ve never met before…… That’s super inspiring.

The volunteers leadingrunning the event were supportive, assuring us that runners of all levels would be treated equally. We discovered later that one of the mandatory volunteer roles includes  “tail walkers,” whose job is to walk along with the back of the crowd to ensure no one finishes in last position. That was reassuring. Equally, runners were encouraged to bring dogs and young kids along, provided they stayed within reach of their respective adults. There was no concern from my dad or me on falling behind or looking out of place. The sentiment was very much, “We’ve all been beginners at some point.”

Accountability buddies

Our first parkrun certainly wasn’t our fastest, with both of us clocking in around the 40-minute mark. We noted how gratifying it was to run alongside like-minded people — the rush of racing from a starting gate in a stampede. Everyone held each other accountable to achieve only the best that could be managed on that day.; 

Tthere was no competition with each other, or even past personal records. 

If we slowed to a walk, those overtaking would spur us along to keep us moving. The marshals around the course would cheer as we arrived at every checkpoint. Truly, witnessing the support network was incomparable.

Fitness tourism

Once I returned to university in 2023, I started clocking regular parkruns with my good friend John (who was something of a parkrun buff already). Through our frequent outings, I learned even more about the parkrun lifestyle. 

Courses are run on a variety of terrains — parks, forests, trails, promenades, beaches, hills, and wherever else permissions can be granted. The range of difficulties and experiences has given rise to a phenomenon called “parkrun tourism.”

Many runners set personal challenges — for example, completing a parkrun starting with every available letter of the alphabet, necessitating trips to countries such as Poland or the Netherlands to knock off tricky letters such as “Z.” UK-based parkrunners might try to complete at least one course in each of the major regions of the United Kingdom. John is one parkrun away from completing all the current 65 courses in the Greater London area, an achievement aptly named “LonDone”. 

I’m only at a measly 22.

Transformation

I’d always been interested in running throughout school and university, but something kept holding me back. Perhaps I felt too shy to demonstrate such a level of exertion in public, or maybe I had a stigma that I was more of a sprinter and could never build up my endurance.

Parkrun changed all of that. The community spirit is transformative — and one of the highlights of my week. Almost three years later, I’m 80 parkruns down and achieving sub-23-minute times regularly. I’ve started completing runs twice more in the week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My fitness and happiness levels have improved tenfold; as a writer, it’s easy to sink into ideas without coming up for air, and running has become my tactic for modulating that burnout. I hope to continue exploring new parkruns and achieving milestones far into the future.

In searching for a new fitness regimeway to commit to consistent exercise, I initially saw parkrun as a starting point. 

Looking back now, starting was the easiest part for me.

Stopping is so much harder.