All you ever wanted to know about parkrun but didn’t know whom to ask

Fred Mason
Faculty of Kinesiology, University of New Brunswick

David Hindley’s Parkrun: An Organised Running Revolution offers thorough consideration of the peculiarly British phenomenon – intentionally inclusive but timed, free cost, 5 kilometer runs on Saturday mornings – that have spread to 2200 regular events in 22 countries. Drawing on an extensive dive into the literature on parkrun, his own involvement and qualitative research, Hindley covers ideas of community, identity, volunteering, and public health interventions. While it is a slim volume of some 135 pages, it covers a lot of ground.

For those unfamiliar, parkrun is “a run, not a race” (according to its founders and ongoing organizers), that occurs in green spaces on Saturday mornings. It started as a single time trial event in Bushy Park, London in 2004, but has expanded to over 1200 locations in the UK and spread internationally. Parkruns attempt to be accessible and inclusive, offering a place for everyone from the fastest runners to the slowest walkers covering the 5K distance. The runs are free, with the low-end technology need of printing a bar code to be scanned at the end.  They are also entirely volunteer-led. Casual social interactions often result from parkruns, but no one is meant to be obligated socially.

Hindley suggests that the rapid expansion and spread of parkrun has resulted from a desire to stay true to notions of accessibility and welcome to all regardless of motivation or competence, and its scalability due to a simple model that is all volunteer-led. Volunteers take many roles at parkruns from race director and timer, to the “tail walker,” a person who walks at the back to ensure safety, and that no one other than them must be last. The author’s research included surveys and interviews with runners and volunteers, finding that parkruns create a leisure space that fosters casual conversation, a sense of belonging and community, and offers personal benefits to participation as a runner and/or volunteer.

There is a solid body of literature on healthism, fitness activities and social class, which suggests that fitness activities, and concomitantly, the fitness industry designed to support and create the need for fitness activities, appeals to the (largely White) middle class.

Since Hindley is a sociologist, one of the key goals of the work is to critically question parkrun’s dominant discourse of inclusivity. He discusses evidence that suggests parkrun reaches groups that have been excluded from other types of events, such as older adults, people who were previously inactive, and people with disabilities. Further, volunteering opportunities allow for non-runners to engage in social interactions and build social capital. At the same time, it is noted that people from lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority backgrounds tend not to participate. The parkrun organization is aware of this and has attempted to start runs in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but it seems with little change. This is one of the few places where the author could be a little more critical.

The concept of “healthism,” where responsibility for a healthy society gets delegated from the state to individuals, is raised on occasion, but not given much attention. There is a solid body of literature on healthism, fitness activities and social class, which suggests that fitness activities, and concomitantly, the fitness industry designed to support and create the need for fitness activities, appeals to the (largely White) middle class. To be fair, this omission may be due to the trickiness of writing critical work that may be read by the group being studied. In his concluding chapter, the author acknowledges that his analysis might be perceived as unduly critical by some parkrun evangelists (p. 133).

Throughout the rest of the book, the author’s use of theory is excellent. In the chapter on “becoming a parkrunner,” the concept of serious leisure is deployed with good effect, tapping into shifts in social identity and the “leisure career.” In explaining the appeal of parkrun to slower runners, and the idea of “it’s a run, not a race,” Hindley turns to the slow living movement, indicating the slower running could be seen as transgressive in a fast-paced society, and help move people towards more meaning and authenticity in their lives.  He also makes a persuasive case for parkrun being a type of “third space” – an accessible public space where people can gather informally and habitually for social interaction that bolsters a sense of belonging.

This book will obviously appeal to scholars interested in social science perspectives on distance running or endurance sports. It is also relevant for readers interested in public health programming and the growing concept of green exercise. The chapter on parkrun’s impact on health reviews research that participating in parkrun, especially as somebody who is inactive previously, provides many individual physical and social benefits. More interestingly, it delves into how the parkrun organization has created partnerships with family doctors’ offices in the UK to tap into the new medical trend of exercise prescription. The author argues that parkrun can be seen as a public health intervention, with its low barriers to entrance and free cost, and it seems some medical offices are sharing information and suggesting patients attend.

The chapter on green exercise – the added value of exercising in nature – serves as a really good introduction to the topic for readers interested in it. It covers notions of nature deficit disorder, studies that show that just living near nature offers health benefits, and the restorative effects of nature exposure. The chapter further explores mixed evidence on benefits of parkruns in nature, musing on whether there is a dilution effect to green benefits as exercise intensity increases.

In the balance, Hindley’s Parkrun book explores the phenomenon deeply and critically, and the author demonstrates his knowledge of the event from academic and personal experience.  While it may seem a bit repetitive when the limited literature on parkrun is raised over and over to address different topics, the book is written well overall and in an accessible style. Further, it raises good questions for future research and for practical matters related to the event, something good research should always do.

Copyright © Fred Mason 2024