An Ode to Park Runs

One of our favourite discoveries during our time in the UK was Park Runs! They are just brilliant in so many ways. Every Saturday at 9am parks all over the country- the world even- host 5km runs, with the whole thing being run by brilliant volunteers. It was definitely something hard to give up, coming back here where people- especially women- don't tend to go running outside. But who knows- we're hatching come plans to start something similar here. Watch this space!



Here are some of the many brilliant things about Park Runs:

• it's so great seeing so many people take part in something outdoors and to be doing something so simple to keep fit
• it's not a race against other people so much as a personal challenge against yourself to improve your personal best (you get your results emailed to you each week). I like how people of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and abilities join in. It's totally fine to walk if you need to!
• being part of something in the community- it's such a great way of getting to know people who you see week in, week out. At the end end there were always people handing out cakes and some people go off for coffee together
• volunteering- the only way these can go ahead. So even if you don't want to run you can be part of it by volunteering and they welcome children volunteers too- always great to get children involved
• we loved doing it as a family- various combinations of us would run together, some separately
• one of the plants of our church put on breakfast one week afterwards as an outreach opportunity
• I just love being part of something big- on a local level but also on a nationwide level. And running with others is a lot more fun than running on your own.

There's loads more information on the Park Run website and on their blog, as well as a podcast. I like using Strava to log my runs and I used the couch to 5k app to get back into  some sort of running fitness!

We had a final family run together the day before we left England
(and a dip in the sea for one crazy person)