parkrun: The simple movement that's gone global
“Knowing what we know now, would we call it parkrun? Probably not. Because, for example being at Balclutha this morning, nearly half of their participants were walkers."
The parkrun tattoo on Tom Williams’ upper arm is a giveaway.
The Englishman is a true believer in just what Parkrun has become since its inception at Bushy Park in London close to 19 years ago.
Of course Williams is a believer. After all, he is Parkrun Global’s Chief Operating Officer. It now pays his bills.
However, it would be unfair to put his passion for the global movement, and charity organisation, down to just that.
Williams’ belief in parkrun - which now has 8.5 million registered participants across 22 countries - started well before he joined as an employee.
He is currently visiting the parkrun community in the south of New Zealand. It’s the first time he has visited since the first parkrun event was held in Lower Hutt in 2012.
His visit included a stop in Invercargill on Friday where Williams shared his own parkrun journey and laid out what the now global charity organisation is about.
In 2007, when working as a lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Leeds, Williams helped start the Woodhouse Moor parkrun in England.
It was the fourth parkrun in the world and the first outside London.
To appreciate the fascinating parkrun journey best, we’ll let Williams take us back to the very start and explain its humble beginnings.
“A chap called Paul Sinton-Hewitt was a fairly competitive runner and was going through a fairly difficult time in his life. He was struggling at work and had separated from his family.
“Running, and being around his running friends, helped his mental health. He got injured and was told he wasn’t going to be able to run for a year, or whatever it was.
“He was suddenly worried about how he was going to cope with life. So, he said to his friends, ‘come to the park, run a 5km, I’ll time you, and then we’ll go for coffee afterwards’.
“The first 10 events were called time trials and the collective name was UK Time Trials. It wasn’t until about event 11, in late 2008, we changed to parkrun, and it’s been parkrun ever since.
“Knowing what we know now, would we call it parkrun? Probably not. Because, for example being at Balclutha this morning, nearly half of their participants were walkers.
“We really encourage walkers. We encourage people to come and walk, not to become runners, just because walking is a really good thing to do. You don’t need to walk it with the aspiration to become a runner, walking in its own right is a great thing to do.
“Hopefully people will gradually realise parkrun means walk, run, volunteer, spectate.
“I think one of the great things that Paul did, is this wasn’t about to happen anyway. If he hadn’t [setup parkrun], someone else wasn’t going to do it. Running was getting more expensive, more elitist, more exclusive, less accessible.
“Running was going that way, and Paul just completely shifted it. I think he does get quite overcome sometimes.
“In 2004 he invited some friends to a park, 13 people come to run, five people to volunteer, him and his wife are two of them, and 19 years later there are eight and half million people registered, 300,000 people a week take part.
“This weekend starting here [in New Zealand] first and finishing in San Francisco 20 hours later, whatever it is, 300,000 people will have run and volunteered across over 200 locations.”
“What he did, just this simple thing, has grown and grown.”
In 2014 Sinton-Hewitt was awarded a CBE for his services to grassroots sports participation.
The parkrun dream is that you could wake up anywhere in the world on a Saturday morning and know there’s a parkrun nearby you can head to.
“At the moment about 90 percent of walkers and runners are in the big four countries. So that’s South Africa, Ireland, UK, and Australia.
“About eight to 10 percent are in the other 18 countries where there are events.
“Obviously we are not in about 180 countries, so over the next five to ten years we are looking to really grow outside of those big four, including New Zealand, and in new countries we aren’t already in. So hopefully we will become truly global.”
In 2011, Williams left the University to work full-time for parkrun, helping launch UK events, and is now Chief Operating Officer of Park Run Global. He is responsible for global development strategy and all operational processes across existing parkrun territories.
Despite the eagerness to keep growing, Williams points out that the principles of Parkrun have, and need to continue to, remain the same. For it to keep the basic roots it was founded on.
He uses “jumpers for goalposts” as something that matches what parkrun is about.
“Jumpers for goalposts” is where people in the UK simply place a couple of jumpers on the ground to play street/or park football.
It’s about simplicity and continuing to remove the cost barrier removed.
“It’s one of our founding principles, to be free forever for everyone… That’s quite expensive to do that.”
Parkrun Global gets about a third of its funding from commercial sponsors, about a third through grant funding, and about a third from its own retail, selling t-shirts and other things.
Williams says the entire group turnover last year was about NZ$15m, with cost breaking down to about $120 per event per week, on average.
Apart from the introduction of bar codes to record times and participant numbers, Williams says parkrun events today mirror what took place in Bushy Park 19 years ago.
The Park Run Global charity has now got to a point where it can cover all of the start-up costs attached to launching a new parkrun event.
Included was supplying a defibrillator to have on hand at each event.
Again, Williams stresses parkrun was more than just a running event.
“I was in Balclutha this morning, I was in Gore this afternoon, I was in Dunedin yesterday and I was in Ireland last weekend. You see the same thing all the time, and it’s about community.
“Human beings have a built-in need - all of us - to be outdoors, active, and social. I think those three things are fundamental needs we all have.
“We may need those three things greater or to a lesser extent than others but it’s in all of us to move outdoors amongst people.
“You think about modern life, there are not many opportunities to do that where you can all participate for free and all together. At parkrun, you can do that.
“A lot of people just spectate, and that’s fine. You are still moving outdoors and still around other people. Whether you’re walking, running, volunteering, or spectating you’re still part of a community.
“We’ve just heard moving story after moving story here in the South Island, New Zealand and we provide it in a really accessible way I think.”
It seems the health benefits that parkrun has created have piqued the interest of people outside of the parkrun community itself.
“In the UK we have a relationship with the Royal College of General Practitioners where GPs prescribe parkrun to their patients.”
Williams hopes that might be able to be rolled out in New Zealand as well.
Liz Henry started the Invercargill parkrun in 2018. The Invercargill lawyer had discovered parkrun while in the Gold Coast one summer and loved the community feel and encouragement.
Each Saturday morning (8am in the summer, 9pm in the summer) the parkrun is now held at Queens Park in Invercargill over a 5km course.
parkrun events have since also been established in Gore and Te Anau.