It only took eight years, three house moves, two jobs, and one pandemic. Just 2,821 days to run 50 parkruns. While that’s roughly one every two months, it also perfectly sums up the joy of this weekly running club .
My older sister Caroline and I started our parkrun journey on the same day back in 2016. She was more of a treadmill runner until I nagged her into trying the fresh air version just once, on my birthday. I’d read all about it and mostly ran on my own at the time, whether out for a light jog or training for a half-marathon , so thought it would be nice to be a bit more sociable (this was in the days before run clubs were the new Tinder!).
Almost 300 miles apart, Caroline in Whitley Bay while I was at Mile End, we lined up for our first free 5km runs. It was pretty cool I thought, bar the distracting smell of KFC halfway through the course, traversed four times in a figure-of-eight. I’d probably go back, I decided.
I did. Once. But for Caroline, it was a little bit life-changing.
Not only did she become hooked on parkrun – on run 222 and counting – she came to love outdoor running, and now has countless half-marathons and two full marathons under her belt. Her training for this year’s New York marathon will ramp up soon, too. I, meanwhile, have continued my rather more casual love affair with parkrun – although running and I are pretty serious, with a marathon under my belt and another lined up.
A move to Shoreditch left me between events, location-wis.