COVID-19 (Coronavirus) update 23 March

Writing this on the one-year anniversary of the UK going into lockdown, it’s difficult to comprehend the challenges we’ve all faced over the last 12 months. And it’s quite remarkable to know that, wherever you are in the world as you read this message, you will undoubtedly have been impacted negatively in some way.

Unfortunately, no parkrun country has yet managed to put the COVID-19 pandemic behind them entirely, however every day we witness incredible acts of kindness, compassion, and ingenuity as communities around the world rise to meet this most incredible of challenges.

Last weekend, we were excited to welcome almost 50,000 different people walking, running, or volunteering at 453 events across Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Guernsey, and the Falkland Islands. Wonderful inspiration for the rest of the parkrun family, and continued evidence that our global COVID-19 Framework allows events to return safely, whilst protecting the community and social essence of what parkrun is all about.



Elsewhere in the world, we continue our work to return junior parkrun across parts of the UK through April and May, as well as 5k events in England in June. These projects are moving forward positively and we really have been humbled by the excitement shown by both parkrunners and landowners with regard to their events returning.

We would, however, like to remind any junior parkrun events in England that in order to secure a restart date of 11 April, we must have requested and received landowner permission no later than this Thursday (25 March).

Outside of the UK, whilst we don’t see any opportunities to return in the short term, things are changing on a daily basis and we are working hard to ensure that as soon as opportunities do appear we will be in a position to move forward.



Thanks as always for your incredible passion for parkrun.



Tom

Tom Williams
Chief Operating Officer
parkrun Global