At 9 a.m. on a Saturday, you’d hardly expect to find me in a local park, yet I discovered it was a hub for community members participating in a Parkrun. This unexpected gathering spot turned into a place of near-pilgrimage for those dedicated to their weekly running ritual.

Although I’ve been on my own sporadic running journey, typically jogging a simple 5k to maintain fitness, I had always hesitated to join any formal running events. Initially, I signed up more for the chance to chat with friends than for the competition. However, I quickly realized that for many, this event was an integral part of their weekend routine.

For some participants, the Parkrun was as effortless as a casual stroll, as they swiftly circled the park, already established as elite runners in the community. I was amazed by the scale of the event, especially in a small city like Derby, in a park where my running days dated back to childhood soccer games.

To my surprise, 275 individuals were ready to go at the crack of dawn on a chilly, damp October morning. This is precisely what makes Parkrun so attractive: an inclusive event that invites everyone to participate in the great outdoors, fostering a strong sense of community, completely free of charge.

Parkrun is a 5k event held every Saturday morning across various parks in UK towns and cities. The initiative has expanded, embracing participants of all kinds, with no pressure of time constraints.

As I hurried to the starting line, I noticed a diverse crowd—parents with strollers, runners trotting alongside their dogs, children, seniors, and, admittedly, the runners I was most intimidated by: seasoned marathoners eager to clock a personal best.

I had always been nervous to sign up for Parkrun, thinking that it would be pretentious and full of ultramarathon runners trying to get an ego boost.

Although, it was far from this – instead it was an event for all of the people sitting somewhere in between, reigning true to their motto: ‘It’s not a race; it’s a run.’ At around each km of the run itself, I was faced with volunteers, carefully placed there to guide runners along the route and cheer you on for a bit of a moral boost. If only I could bring these people with me on every run to tell me to keep going after the first 3km.

On the way around the route, complete strangers running past would egg me and my friends on with their words of encouragement – typically these were confident ‘come on’s’ or ‘keep going, girls’.

At first I thought this was sweet, but after the third incident I started to question how badly I must be doing to seem to need so much encouragement.

Mostly, I was shocked to see that week in, week out, they were able to garner enough volunteers to manage the event, hand out each individual’s barcodes to track their times, and keep people on the right track. It was a friendly reminder to me that there is still a strong sense of community out there, in and around our towns and cities, that maybe I had been ignorant of before.

With the constant pressures to join the gym or try a craze diet or new ‘miracle’ product to be healthy, Parkrun felt like the antidote to all of that. It continues to help people keep fit the good old-fashioned way – outside, for free and with a community surrounding you each step of the way.