HAPPY Saturday! Many of you may have gotten up early this morning to head to your local Parkrun course and started your weekend off right with a brisk 5K run.

This week marks 20 years since parkrun's founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, organised the Bushy Park Time Trial that evolved into parkrun. The first run took place on October 2, 2004, where 13 runners descended to complete the course.

There are many courses across Somerset: Minehead, Longrun Meadow (Taunton), Burnham and Highbridge, Frogmary Green Farm (South Petherton), Street, Shepton Mallet, The Old Showfield (Frome), Marine Parade (Weston-super-Mare), Clevedon and Sharpham Road Playing Fields.

See more on this website: Find my nearest Parkrun course.

Hundreds of people turn up in Somerset to their local course every Saturday.

Nationally, 200,000 people take part across more than 900 locations in the UK – and while some are experienced runners, others are building up their speed and stamina and many are taking their first steps towards a more active lifestyle.

In October 2022, Taunton's Longrun Meadow Parkrun celebrated its 400th event, which coincided with Halloween, so people dressed in appropriate costumes.

In 2016, Paralympian Hannah Taunton became the first female overall winner in the event's history.

Posting a time of 17:45, just missing her personal best by four seconds – she recorded that PB of 17:41 four weeks earlier, breaking 18 minutes for the first time.

They are entirely volunteer-led, with people volunteering to marshal the course or scan the runners barcodes so their times can be logged in the leaderboard which is published on the website.

Parkrun rose in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic, as a way for people to keep fit and meet people during lockdown. Completing a parkrun was counted as your daily exercise, so exempt from the Covid guidelines.

In 2024, volunteer-led, free-for-all 5k and 2k events take place across the UK every Saturday morning, from 9am. 

The Parkrun UK website says that in the early days, before the barcode system that takes place nowadays results on paper and the finish tokens were washers from the local hardware store. Soon after it was born, the barcode result system was introduced.

Now many hundreds of thousands of parkrunners are processed, websites updated and millions of emails sent each week. See more on the Parkrun website.