LONDON — On a weekend morning in the fall of 2004, 13 runners lined up in a London park to take part in an unofficial race. Little did they know that they were taking the first step in what would become a worldwide movement.
Paul Sinton Hewitt had a simple ambition: to offer a free weekly 5-kilometre (3.1-mile) run that anyone could take part in.
“We didn’t know who was going to be there that day,” Sinton Hewitt said. “I didn’t care how many people came. I’ll be at the start line every week for the rest of my life helping people run.”
Parkrun, as it has come to be known, has far surpassed his vision, celebrating its 20th anniversary on Saturday, and runs now held in more than 2,500 locations, including 25 prisons in nearly 20 countries. has been done. More than 10 million people have taken part in at least one parkrun and the organization has recorded more than 100 million completions.
“We’re the smallest we’ve ever been,” Sinton Hewitt said. “In 20 years, when we come back and talk about this again, the numbers will be very small. So that’s strange.”
The feel-good Fun Run is credited with changing countless lives, uplifting people, motivating them to return week after week, and fostering lifelong friendships. Testimonies range from couch potatoes to people who reversed their diabetes and quit drinking, to inmates who found a way out while serving time.
The World Health Organization supports parkrun, which provides an accessible way to get physically active, and more than 2,000 clinics have partnered with the organization to promote its health benefits.
More than 45,000 people who registered for parkrun in the UK this year were completely inactive before signing up, according to research published in PLOS Global Public Health on Tuesday.
Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield studied around 550 newly registered runners over a six-month period and found that life satisfaction improved after just two parkruns.
“We all say it’s changed our lives,” says Caroline Noone, who started running around age 50 and has completed more than 320 parkruns.
It’s a phrase that Synton Hewitt hears all the time as the organization’s executive director.
None of this might have happened if it weren’t for a Springer Spaniel named Tim.
Synton Hewitt, a lifelong runner, was seriously injured when he tripped over a dog while training for a marathon.
He kept getting injured again, his dreams of a sub-2:30 marathon that was once within his reach ended, and he realized that his competitive running career was probably over at age 44.
This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. He had lost his job, had relationship problems and was struggling with his mental health. Running has been his outlet since he was a child growing up in South Africa as a ward of the state, but now he is sidelined.
Synton Hewitt missed the social aspect of running and wanted to give back to the sport. He came up with the idea of a 5km time trial, where runners could race against the clock and enjoy coffee with friends afterwards.
The first run was held at Bushey Park, once King Henry VIII’s hunting grounds and later headquarters for General Dwight Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion plans during World War II.
Parkrun didn’t initially take the running world by storm.
After a modest start, the second week attracted one more runner. By the third week, the number had dropped to 12. But Christmas that year was on a Saturday and there were 25 runners. It was off and running.
As its popularity grew, Synton Hewitt resisted pressure to recreate the event elsewhere until 2007, when a friend presented him with plans to organize a second edition at Wimbledon. Once he realized it was possible, it rapidly expanded that year to six locations in the UK, including Leeds and Brighton, with Zimbabwe being its first international venue.
“We didn’t want to sell a concept that said, ‘You should come here and do this.’ We wanted it to sell organically, and people inherently felt it was good. It sold,” Sinton Hewitt said.
Despite once being called a time trial, parkrun organizers (yes, that’s all lower case) are adamant that it’s not a race. Participants can run as fast or slow as they like. Many people walk the course.
“One of the big barriers we see from people who have registered but not yet taken part is the misconception that this is a race and people aren’t strong enough or fast enough,” said CEO ) said Russ Jeffries.
The organization said it is trying to remove those hurdles by retrieving records for men and women from its website. Some saw the move as a response to criticism of inclusive policies that allow participants to register as the gender of their choice.
British think tank Policy Exchange took aim at parkruns and other athletic events that play on gender identity, saying three parkrun records for women were set by biological men. They wanted parkrun to collect information about participants’ biological sex and set course records or be stripped of government funding.
The organization rejected this, leaning into its inclusivity and “free for all, forever” philosophy. Jeffries said it took a long time to delete the records.
Jeffries said the company plans to continue growing overseas to meet high demand following the running boom that began during the pandemic.
Two weeks ago, Lithuania became the 23rd country to offer parkrun in its capital, Vilnius. Jefferies said Uganda, Portugal and Switzerland are likely to be next.
The organization is a global charity based in the UK, but also receives public funding and commercial sponsorship in the UK, Ireland and Australia.
On a recent Saturday at Hampstead Heath, a wild mix of rolling meadows and woodlands north of London, Noon was among nearly 500 park runners, a five-fold increase since she started in 2014. There was only one person.
“My ambition was just to never stop,” she said of her first parkrun. “The first time I quit. … I thought I wasn’t going to be embarrassed and I was going to walk home. But I kept coming. It’s been 10 years.”
