Race No 18 – International Parkrun Day
Ok so I know I am a few days late but those of you who know me will know birthdays have never been my strong point, so even though I am a little late this one deserves a special mention
This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Parkrun, Parkrun was founded by Paul Sinton Hewitt in Bushy Park, London and the event was originally called Bushy Park Time Trial, this grew to a small number events across the UK before officially becoming Parkrun in 2010, where the event has gone from strength to strength
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29488453
The original event had just 13 participant who all returned today to their starting place in Bushy Park to join 1700 other runners to celebrate Parkruns 10th birthday, along with many others in the 375 locations in 9 countries across the world
For those of you that haven’t heard about Parkrun, they offer free to enter, weekly, timed 5k events in local parks every Saturday at 9am, to go along all you need to do is register online at http://www.parkrun.org.uk & print off the barcode they provide and bring it along to the race with you
I went along to my local Parkrun with a friend this morning expecting a celebration, but it was barely even mentioned, I know the event is run by volunteers but I feel with a little more effort they could have really publicised their great little event, but it was hardly mentioned on their Facebook page this week & there was nothing at the event to indicate today was any different, other than possibly them wanting to dash off as they had packed away the flags, the stop watch and the numbers you received before the last two participants crossed the finish line
I have to be honest, I was disappointed today, I am lucky in that I have a few nearby Parkrun events as it’s certainly put me off this particular one and it has also put me off telling newbie runners about Parkrun, in case they find themselves missed by the tail runner, but then I suppose this is not exclusive to Parkrun as I also witnessed this at the Resolution Run in London last year
If you went along to celebrate Parkrun’s birthday yesterday, share below which event you went to
Project Healthy Fit Me 
Hi. Sorry to hear you were disappointed with your experience at Gungahlin parkrun. We did run the course in reverse and mentioned it was International parkrun day in the run briefing. We were gearing up for our first anniversary on the 18 October which was a huge event for us. We had award presentations, a free breakfast, cake and some prize draws.
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Hi Brendan it was actually Barking Parkrun I attended on International Park Run Day, Unfortunately Oz is a but to far to travel to on a Saturday morning from East London, hope you enjoyed your birthday celebrations thou
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