Parkrunning

In Woody Allen’s 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters there’s a scene where Mickey, a despairing television writer trying to seek a meaning in life (played by Allen, inevitably) is walking through Central Park. In the middle of his existential crisis he looks at the joggers who pass him by. We hear his thoughts:

Oh! Look at all these people jogging … trying to stave off the inevitable decay of the body. Boy it’s so sad what people go through with their stationary bike and their exercise and their … (a woman jogger in a sweatsuit runs past him) … Oh! Look at this one! Poor thing. My God, she has to tote all that fat around. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.

It’s funny, and graceless, and that’s where I was a year ago – not knowing where to go, but knowing for sure that running around a park wasn’t the answer to anything. And how wrong I was. For now I do Parkrun.

Parkrun is one of the most remarkable social phenomena of our age. Every Saturday at 9am at some 1,300 locations across the UK, and in 1,200 locations in twenty-two other countries (with variations on the starting time), a group of ordinary people set off running, jogging, or walking, or a combination of these, on a five kilometre route. The locations are parks, woods, lakes, stately homes, beaches, car parks, sports fields and so on. The route can be a single circuit of somewhere or multiple laps, just so long as the five kilometre mark is reached.

The fundamental thing about Parkrun is that it is not a race. The aim is to complete the distance, but how you do so is up to you. You can walk the course if that is what best for you (Parkrun features backmarker volunteers who walk as slowly as the slowest participant), or you can run at whatever speed suits you. Parkrun is competitive, but the only competition is with yourself. Every ‘run’ is timed, via a barcode system for registered participants, with your result being emailed to you within an hour or so of completing the course, with your time, your position among those of your age group, and how close you were to you personal best. Whatever your athletic ability, you are measuring yourself against yourself, and any second shaved off your best previous time feels like a medal-winning triumph.

What makes Parkrun work, however, is its geniality. You turn up just before 9am at the start and someone outlines the course for you and the basic rules. Then they thank the volunteers who make the whole thing happen. We all applaud. Then they name those Parkrunners who have passed assorted milestones – 25, 50, 100, 250 runs. We all applaud again. The run begins and everyone sets off at their own pace. For courses with more than one lap you soon get used to side-stepping as the faster runners pass by, everyone being on their own private run which fits in harmoniously with everyone else’s run. Volunteer marshals stand at various points. They are there to ensure all goes well, but they also call out encouragement. No matter how slow you may be, they congratulate you for the effort made. You reach the end, where you barcode in swiped and you are given a token which will in turn be scanned to give you your time for the day. Those manning the finish congratulate you. So do those swiping the barcodes. Everyone and everything encourages. Nor is there any dress code. Certainly the majority have running gear of one sort or another, but that’s only practical. You can run, jog and walk in whatever way you wish to.

And it is all free, and open to anyone.

Parkrun is the creation of Paul Sinton-Hewitt, who launched the first such ‘race’ at Bushy Park in London on 2 October 2004. It was only later called Parkrun; initially, it was the Bushy Park Time Trial, and there were thirteen runners with three volunteers. The numbers grew, though it was not until 2007 that a second Time Trial began at Wimbledon, out of which the idea developed of having the same set-up in different locations. Zimbabwe was the surprise first country to adopt the model outside of the UK, in 2008; today there are some ten million Parkrunners and 900,000 volunteers linked to over 2,500 Parkruns worldwide, with the most active countries being the UK, Australia and South Africa.

It is very striking how successful Parkrun has been, particularly in the UK, when government and institutional initiatives to get us all healthier have been notable failures. The idealistic goals of individual Olympic Games, promising the International Olympic Committee that somehow the vision of the Games will translate into nations who love to participate in sports, with all of its assumed health and social benefits, as opposed to people who simply like to watch sport for a couple of weeks in the summer when there isn’t much else on the television anyway. Parkrun came from us and needed no international directive to bring it into being. Indeed, such a directive would have died at its birth. It is the modesty of Parkrun that brought it to life and has kept it going – whether running, jogging or walking.

My introduction to Parkrun was simply as a witness. I was brought along by an enthusiastic Parkunner and was content simply to see them participate. I still found the idea of running myself somehow absurd. It was not that I was any longer thinking like Allen that exercise was merely some futile gesture in the face of inevitable decay. It was too easy to see that those participating were doing so simply because it made them happy. But I didn’t run because in my mind I was not a runner. A perverse kind of pride made me merely a spectator.

But pride never lasts. I started walking the course. Just one lap was enough, this being chiefly for health reasons, but then a second and finally a third, even if I was always among the backmarkers. I jogged for some metres, when I thought no one would be looking. Then I signed up officially for Parkrun, with barcode allocated and times announced – what simple pleasure when I got the email that told me that my first finish time was my personal best. I clapped with the announcements, said thank you to the marshals, exchanged pleasantries with my fellow runners, in time found myself running more than I walked. Gradually I felt myself merging into the crowd.

Parkrun is about running in company. Although everyone is racing – if that is the right word – against themselves, they do so collectively. It is the antithesis of competition. It is a space when everyone strives and nobody wins, because nobody loses. This is where the Olympic Games has always got it wrong. The stated belief may be that it is not the winning but the taking part that counts, but there is not all that much difference if what you are taking part in has winning as its goal. The Olympic Games falls down because of its medals. It falls down because of the profound difference between sport and exercise. Sport is generally seen a competitive and involving a combination of exercises, or exercise as a mean to achieve sporting goals. Exercise is focussed on the goal of bodily health.

But Parkrun breaks down such distinctions. It makes exercise the goal of competition, by making the competition against oneself. That alone would be the same as the goals set by a solo runner, but by being collective Parkrun makes the participant realise that we are all in the same game. This must be the key to its success. It is exercise, but it is also sport without sides.

‘This country’s going to war’ number from Duck Soup

In Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen’s character eventually finds a reason for living when he visits a cinema and see the Marx Brothers in their comic masterpiece Duck Soup, specifically the glorious ‘This country’s going to war’ scene. He tells himself:

And I started to feel how can you even think of killing yourself? Look at all the people up there on the screen. You know, they’re real funny, and, and what if the worst is true? What if there’s no God, and you only go around once and that’s it? Don’t you want to be part of the experience? What the hell, it’s not all a drag. I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.

The film told him that life was there to be enjoyed. Likewise Parkrun. You only have to be with it to know it. It is an expression of the love of life.

Links:

• There is going to be a Parkrun near you. There is a map of all Parkrun events worldwide, where you can zoom down to the location nearest you. In the UK, there are currently 1,306 Parkrun events taking place every Saturday. I run at Shorne Woods in Kent.