The event, which is celebrating its anniversary, has grown into a global phenomenon – and made us feel a whole lot better
wenty years ago, on a windy, autumnal Saturday morning, 13 runners showed up to a park in south-west London for an event called the Bushy Park Time Trial. A 5km course was plotted and the organiser, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, a computer programmer who grew up in South Africa, bought washers from a hardware store to hand out as finish tokens. The times were tapped up on a laptop afterwards in a local Caffè Nero.
“Once you get started, once you’re hooked, it’s like a drug, you can’t stop it,” says Fletcher, with a broad grin, after crossing the line. “Every Saturday at 9am, wherever I am in the world, I’m going to try and do a Parkrun. I’ve done one in Kraków. I was in Helsinki, I did one there. I was in Namibia last year in Swakopmund and I just showed up, and the guys were superb. We start, we finish, and we all have a bit of banter at the end of it. It’s a superb community spirit.
Recent research from Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield seems to enforce Sinton-Hewitt’s point. The six-month study, which looked at 548 newly registered Parkrunners, and used the UK Office for National Statistics metrics for measuring wellbeing, showed life satisfaction increased after doing just two Parkruns. “During Covid, life satisfaction went down by 0.
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