Last weekend, parkrun South Africa turned 11 years old, and what an amazing 11 years it’s been! To celebrate, Bruce Fordyce, the President of parkrun South Africa reflects on how it all started, and how far we’ve come. I think it was a day in December a few years ago when I inadvertently intercepted a…
At just 34 years old, and after three years of hard work and waiting, Karishma had finally achieved her goal – running the whole 5km at parkrun. Now she was being told she should no longer run. parkwalk has given her the motivation to keep going. When Karishma Kulkarni arrived in Australia from India…
In our four-part training series, we’ll be introducing some of the training methods you can use to help you improve your running and your parkrun PB, whilst showing how a couple of tweaks to your mid-week training could help you become a more confident runner, whatever your aspirations! In this instalment, we’re discussing Strength and Conditioning….
October has sadly come to an end, but what a month it’s been as we’ve celebrated parkwalk at parkrun! Over the past five weekends, more than 100,000 5k walks have been completed at parkrun. This includes welcoming 10,000 new walkers to parkrun, as well as inspiring thousands of existing parkrunners to join the fun…
Nicola Doward plucked up the courage to join her husband and daughter at parkrun, reassured by them that she would be welcomed, not be judged. Nicola tells us her inspiring parkwalk story. On 19 August 2022, I gathered all of my courage and registered for parkrun. At just under 190 kilograms, the three ‘M’s…
Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi is a GP, TV doctor and triathlete! He shares his top five ways walking helps your mental health. There are about 500 ways in which walking is good for your mental health, so this will be difficult, but here are my top five. These are why each Saturday morning I can be found…
The uplifting magic of #parkwalk has spread across the world, from the beautiful parks in South Africa to the north of Scandinavia and everywhere in between. Let’s take a #parkwalk tour across continents and have a look at what parkwalk means to parkrunners across the globe. Sweden I love tail walking for the…
Philippa Levey’s enthusiasm for parkrun is striking, but the resilience behind her story is remarkable. Following a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, Phillipa shares her journey from avoiding exercise completely, to not being able to imagine her life without parkrun. I am a 70-year-old parkrun devotee, and what is unusual about this comment is that I…
Alicia Hopper is a nurse that has always encouraged being open about mental health, but when it came to her own mental health, she initially struggled. Alicia describes how she came to terms with her mental health and got involved at parkrun to help manage it. In my mid-twenties I was diagnosed with clinical depression. It…
Can you imagine having so little energy that after walking a few hundred metres you’d need to stop and rest? For Gerry Ligtermoet this scenario is all too real, but it hasn’t stopped him from completing over 100 parkruns. Gerry was diagnosed with Amyloidosis in 2011, a rare blood disorder that leads to…
