It’s for everyone
Whether you’re young or old, male
or female, fit or unfit, able-bodied or not, you’re always welcome. It’s not
about racing, it’s about running.
Parkrun (styled as parkrun) is the name given to a
collection of five-kilometer running events that take place every Saturday
morning in fourteen countries across five continents. Each Parkrun territory
has its own sponsors. Events are run by volunteers, and participation is free
of charge.
Runners are required to register online in advance for a unique
number and to print their own identification barcode for use when taking part.
Runners' results in each event are processed and uploaded online after the run
by volunteers. Each registered runner has an individual page cataloguing the
details of each event in which they have participated.
Founded by Paul Sinton-Hewitt in 2004, the idea of Parkrun
grew from the initial Bushy Parkrun event (originally called Bushy Park Time
Trial) into a small collection of events called the UK Time Trials and then
into Parkrun (2010). Events now take place every week in Australia, Denmark,
Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Singapore,
the Czech Republic,] the United States, Italy and France. Parkruns have
previously been operated in Zimbabwe and Iceland. There was also formerly a
Parkrun at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, which was operated by Parkrun UK.
Sinton-Hewitt was presented the Runner's World 'Heroes of Running' award for
philanthropy for his work with Parkrun in 2009 and became a CBE in the Queen's
birthday honors 2014 for 'services to grass roots sports participation'.
Global participation first exceeded 10,000 in April 2011 and
20,000 in August 2012. Neither participation nor event numbers show any sign of
slowing with global participation first exceeding 30,000 in April 2013 (225
events), 40,000 in August 2013 (282 events), 50,000 in November 2013 (317
events), 60,000 in January 2014 (340 events), 70,000 in April 2014 (386
events), and more than 100,000 by April 2016 (more than 730 events).
Just over 332,000 individuals did their first run with
Parkrun in 2013, taking the total number of individuals who have ever run with
Parkrun to 663,900. Just over 1.95 million runs were recorded in 2013 taking
the total number of runs since it started in 2004 to 3.92 million runs. Making
all this possible were the contributions of 42,800 unique volunteers who
volunteered in excess of 180,000 times across 362 events or locations while
delivering 14,015 events during the year. 153 new events were added in 2013. In
May 2014 the 1,000,000 registrant mark was passed.
By 24 December 2015, there were over two million registered
Parkrunners globally, together having done over 12.5 million runs, with one
million instances of volunteering. Come December 2016, parkrun
"athlete" number 3,000,001 had been issued, representing over
2,000,000 participants with runners using over 1,000 parks worldwide.
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