4 weeks, 3 countries – parkrun around the world!

Paul Balsom, who’s on the parkrun Sweden Board, has a busy schedule, working with both Leicester City and the Swedish national football team.

On top of this, he’s also a passionate parkrunner. Here’s his report of his parkrunning experiences over the past month. (The photo is taken from the Albert Park parkrun in Melbourne – Paul’s in the Swedish top in the middle of the picture. Funny to see woolly hats on display – one wonders what they’d be wearing if they were running in Sweden!).

“In the past 4 weeks, through work, I have visited Melbourne, London and Paris. In each of these cities I have been fortunate to stay within accessible distance of a parkrun. I have enjoyed all 3 of them immensely and the one thing that has been extremely notable is the exceptionally high quality that each parkrun has delivered.

In Melbourne (Albert Park) we were 230 runners and it was their 255th parkrun. In London (Burgess Park) it was their 208th parkrun and the number of runners were 249, whilst in Paris (du Bois de Boulogne) we were 42 runners and incidentally it was also their 42nd event.

I would like to take this opportunity to praise both Global parkrun and the local parkrun organisers for making this possible. One interesting observation that I have made during my travels is that with parkrun in London I was joined by 4 work colleagues whereas in Australia and Paris I ran alone despite inviting a greater pool of work colleagues to join me.

Maybe more work is needed to “export” parkrun outside of the UK so that people know what they’re missing out on! Long live parkrun!”