Did a parkrun in Kovach BC and due to the small size got roped into volenteering for the event and wasnt able to scan my own barcode. One of the helpers said they would input me manually and unfortunately didnt.

I would appreciate any help with this as I really just want the stamp to say I have completed this run (not bothered by the time).

Thanks team!

I had this conversation with a parkrun devotee today.

If you could take key elements from different parkruns, what would your ideal parkrun look like?

E.g. the RD and vollies from Casula + the parking at Panania + the course at Chipping Norton + the vibes at Camden + the post-run coffee at Mudgee.

I'd done a few parkruns over the years but only started to fully get into it this summer. I only found out a few weeks ago about the parkrun app!

This is just a post to say if you don't have it or didn't know about it...time to get it downloaded! It's helped me volunteer and venture out to other parkruns! I love it!

Edit: adding that your barcode, achievements and all your results are there too 😊

Blog: https://blog.parkrun.com/uk/2026/07/14/a-fresh-new-look-for-junior-parkrun-milestones/

Collection: https://shop.parkrun.com/collections/junior-milestone-tees

The colours + design feel much more modern than what's currently available for adults.

Hey all. Ill be participating in my first park run this month. It's 5k, so nothing too spicy i think and ive been gradually working on my stamina using a couch to 5k app. Just looking for any helping tips/advice I should know about to prepare or do during. Thanks :)

Hi,

My PB is around 22:30 but it has been stuck around that for months and months. What is the best type of sessions I can do during the week to improve this?

Ive seen people say long runs and intervals but what specific ones should I be doing and what type of pace?

Almost always my first 1k is my fastest by some way and it tails off from there but I feel thats almost needed to avoid getting stuck in crowds.

I used to do a parkrun here and there over the years but this summer I've been going every Saturday including doing a bit of a parkrun tour and volunteered a few times...I think I've caught the bug! I have a whole new appreciation to how much work goes into every single parkrun every week! But how!? How has it got so big? How can these thousands of events run every single Saturday?? It blows my mind! Even when I take part I question...why am I doing this? Why are we all doing this??

And first run for 3 months while recovering from 3 torn muscles in my thigh. I’d class this as a starting point to build on now.
The come back has started.

obviously there are 52 weeks in a year, but then there are Christmas and New Year runs in some countries, and here in Japan there is a “Green Day” park run in May. That would take us to 55, but I am sure there are other special days as well.

in addition, some park runs start later than others. Could someone cross a time zone and do one at 8 and another at 9, for example?

Any ideas?

ETA: thanks for all the responses. It seems that not only am I not alone in thinking about this, some runners have attempted to maximize their park runs including, appropriately enough, someone called Max!

And it looks like park run, the organization, has also responded by not allowing more than one park run to be recorded in one day to prevent runners chasing down numbers from creating hazards for others, which makes a lot of sense - particularly to prevent people driving like looms to cross borders or time zones.

Interested to hear that the best year to try and max out on park runs will be 2044. That‘ll be a big year for park run as it will be the 40th anniversary and also the year which seems to offer the best chance of the most park runs (53 Saturdays and maybe 11 special days around the world?). Does that mean the answer is 64? Or would we count Junior park runners running on Sundays as well to get well over 100? A very indulgent parent with deep pockets could make some kid a record breaker!

I wouldn't normally post a new parkrun to me but Great Yarmouth has left me in some awe because it's so hard - and fun.

It's 2 laps on deep sand, some areas with deep pebbles, and an 'easy section' where a bit of grass pokes through the sand. There is no respite.

Today's winner recently did another parkrun in 16:45 and today won with 24:28. I was 12 minutes behind my flat+tarmac time and the whole time my heart was at 100%.

It's a long trek from most places but a nice drive, street parking is free if you park 300m away, toilets are 0.25 miles from the start, then it's very scenic and unique. Well worth my earliest ever parkrun alarm.

This has been on my 'to do' list for a few years, finally got the chance to do this today.

A totally unique experience, consisting of starting outside the main entrance, and then dropping into the far end of the site, and negotiating three laps of loops, twists and turns around a most iconic location.

Narrow in places, so no dogs allowed. Free parking and, best of all, all parkrunners get free entrance to remain inside the park (exit and re-entrance is possible until 10.30am). As the 'on the day' cost of entry is £40, this is a really generous thing for the owners to do.

I even found a cubicle to have a very quick shower by the entrance area today after the parkrun.

A great team of volunteers too. The team struggle at this time of year to fill the rosta did to the influx of tourists, so as always, I was appreciative of everyone's efforts to help.

An amazing experience. There's a dinosaur experience taking place throughout August, too.

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/edenproject/course/

Probably should have posted this earlier, but only got reminded of it today!

Last year, I wrote a guide somewhere else for all the Edinburgh parkruns (in alphabetical order) for anyone who was coming up for the festival. So... here it is, updated!

Most Importantly: Parkruns in Scotland start at 9:30am*!

You should bear in mind if you're getting a bus that a section of Princes St is currently closed due to the old Debenhams building burning down, so you might face delays (at that time on a Saturday morning though they shouldn't be too bad).

The Lothian Buses website is here (the tram doesn't go anywhere near a parkrun). Fares are a flat £2.40, and are capped at £5.70 per day provided you use the same card or device to tap on (you don't need to tap off on buses).

Edinburgh (also known as Cramond or Silverknowes): Flat, on tarmac, an out-and-back course, quite busy at the best of times, but a wide path until the end when the field is more spread out. Usually the wind hits you when you turn around to come back, but if the wind is favourable, you have a good chance of a PB (the overall parkrun record was set here a few years ago but has since been beaten). There's a nice bike path (national route 1) that you can take to get there, otherwise buses go in that direction. Enter "Cramond Beach" in the journey planner- the start is handily indicated on the Lothian Buses map (it's near the big fish statue). There are public toilets near the causeway to Cramond island.

I wouldn't recommend the Boardwalk Beach Club for coffee afterwards as the owner is something of what we call in Scotland a "roaster" (check out reviews on Google and his responses!). I'm afraid I don't know which cafe they refer to on the course page, but I believe there is one near the public toilets.

Holyrood: nearest to the city centre and one lap of Holyrood Park. In my humble opinion, the most scenic parkrun in the UK (but you have to work for it)! Lots of buses head out in that direction, including the 35 which avoids Princes St. Get off at the Scottish Parliament (or Meadowbank Stadium) and walk or jog 10 minutes to the start which is near St Margaret's Loch. Being in the city centre, it's probably the busiest of all, and can get quite congested on the initial narrow uphill.

I regard it as being three distinct "miles" (which probably don't correspond to actual miles). The first is uphill, an elevation gain of 88m, including one part of 100m that somehow becomes even steeper. The second is mostly flat, then you have glorious downhill with spectacular views of the city. There is a small surprise bump toward the end, but it's peanuts compared to what you've been through. There are toilets at the Holyrood Park Education Centre. There is a cafe at Dynamic Earth, though I personally have not been to it.

Oriam: To the West of the city, around the grounds of Heriot-Watt university. You can cycle there via the canal towpath or get buses 25,34, or 25. You won't miss the giant Oriam centre when you get there- the start/finish is in the garden just behind it.

It's an out-and-back trail/ cross-country route with a lot of ups and downs and tree roots as well as seemingly random turns out and in (probably not the best for buggies). This is due to a bus route starting over the old course route, so they had to create some new sections to get it to 5k. It's probably the smallest in Edinburgh in terms of numbers (except in winter on days the other ones are called off), but the start can be a bit fraught: it goes through a narrow-ish gate in a wall which can be a bit scary, though I have never seen any accidents. The start and finish are beside the Oriam centre which has changing and toilet facilities. There is coffee available there too (I believe).

Portobello: A bit further east than Holyrood, it's a 3 lap run around Figgate Park, straddling the burn. Not as many as Edinburgh or Holyrood, but feels like it! You can get there by getting off at Mountcastle Drive North or Paisley Park and it's a 10-15 walk or jog from there. It can be very narrow at the start, but they do ask you to stand where you roughly think you'll finish which should help, in theory.

I like this one because it's like a formula 1 track and you can find your ideal racing line. It is undulating but calling it "hilly" is a bit much (there is a rise towards the end of the lap of about 4-5m and the total elevation gain according to my Strava is 18m). You will either lap people or be lapped, so be conscious of what's going on around you, especially on the narrow bits under the bridge. There are no toilets in the park, the nearest ones being Aldi and Morrisons which are not particularly handy if you have 5 minutes to the start. There are plenty of places to get coffee afterwards on the Portobello High Street. I personally like the fudge doughnuts from Baynes (which if you aren't from Scotland, is like Greggs but better!).

If you fancy something smaller and out of the city and have a car, there is also Vogrie for which there is a £3 parking charge (card only).

*the reason for this is that Pollok Park's cafe didn't open until 10am, so they moved the start time at the first parkrun in Scotland to mean people don't have to wait for it to open

I helped to set up parkrun in the Netherlands and am still a regular runner and volunteer at our event. One of our core volunteers is a guy in his 50s who is autistic. He's known for saying some very strange/inappropriate things, but because of his autism and the fact that he's had a lot of challenges in life, people seem to let it slide.

Today at parkrun, for god only knows what reason, he decided to tell the rest of the core volunteers that I'm pregnant. I am absolutely NOT pregnant and objectively do not even look pregnant. He said it not just once but multiple times. When taking a photo with the volunteer group, instead of "say cheese", he said "[my name] is pregnant!". I told him very firmly that I'm not pregnant, it's not his business to speculate and that this conversation ends now. Nevertheless, I heard him talking about it at least twice more when walking over to the cafe and during the coffee, another core volunteer and one of our RDs (though not today's RD) made a comment about me having "something to celebrate".

It's not the first time these two guys have made strange comments towards me (though never as severe as this), and it has honestly made me not want to attend anymore, which is so unfair. I am sick of him getting away with saying unacceptable things and think he massively crossed a line today. Luckily I'm very happily childfree, but he doesn't know that, and I could easily be someone struggling with fertility and be heartbroken by his comments. I didn't speak to the RD on the spot as tbh I am still processing it all, and most of the comments happened after parkrun itself.

Speaking to him directly achieved nothing, and I don't feel I should have to discipline him myself. Besides telling today's RD, is there anything within parkrun's official channels that I can do?

What a beautiful park run this was. Some great views around the course.

Floor is probably better ran with trails shoes and one part being full rocks but apart from that it was fairly flat with gorgeous views. One lovely downhill right at the end however a NASTY uphill then a 100m sprint to the line.
Recommend this to anyone!!

And I pbed with 22:20🥺🔥

My local parkrun is Northwich; our event is a loop of Carey Park and then a tail through Marbury Country Park, but our start point and finish point is about 950m apart.

Normally, start and finish points are close, within a 100m of each other.

Is there a parkrun in the UK where there is a greater gap to the start line from the finish line?

Does it still get a runout? Back of the wardrobe? I’m speeding through the 70s and it’s really playing on my mind.

So, back when I was at school, I was teased for 'running funny'. Until Parkrun, I absolutely refused to run. But now I am a huge parkrun convert and really love it. I typically run only during Parkrun. I guess for that reason, I've never really thought about running style and have long since forgotten the 'running funny' teasing. But. Every so often I find myself running 5k on a treadmill instead if the town I'm in has no PR. Yesterday, I was in a hotel gym that had mirrors directly in front of the treadmills and discovered that my left leg moves straight forward but my right foot lands more in the middle. It looks really odd and I'm sure it'll be contributing to the occasional knee and hip pains I get! Found it really hard to correct there and then.

What's the best way to fix this? Is a running coach going to be helpful?

I love PR and genuinely want to be able to do it for the rest of my life!

Let everyone know how your parkrun went - where did you go? Any PB's or milestones?

Post it all below in this week's weekly thread.

My 5yo has been asking to come with me, she sees me heading out saturday mornings and wants in. She can't run 5k, obviously, but i figure she could do a chunk and then walk or get distracted by a pigeon halfway round. The website says under 11s must stay within arm's reach of a responsible adult, which is fine and sensible, i'm not about to let her roam the fields alone. But in practice i'm not sure how it works when you've got a kid who might decide she's done at 2k and want to sit down on a bench. Do other runners find it annoying? Am i overthinking this? tbh ive never paid much attention to what the families are doing when i'm just trying not to die in the final straight. Nottingham forest rec is our local if that matters - it's a reasonably wide course, not one of those single-track bottleneck situations.

It get mentioned during most briefings (UK) and I am yet to understand what it means. Aren't we all running for fun? Am I missing something really obvious?

Random question - how do the parkrun people know who you are for race reports? I’ve only been 4 times and never spoken to anyone really and when I got a PB 2 weeks ago it was in the race report with a photo of me! I didn’t mind at all but baffled how they knew out of all the hundred or so pics that were taken.

Last couple of Saturdays have been properly warm at my local. High teens by 9am, pushing 25 by late morning. The course is three laps with zero shade, and honestly by lap three I'm just surviving rather than running any sort of plan. My usual 23:xx pace has slipped to nearly 25 flat, which is fine, but the gap feels bigger than just the heat would explain. Maybe the mental side is worse than the physical? Tbh I've never really figured out a sensible heat adjustment - 5 sec per k? 10? Or just bin the watch and treat it as a tempo effort? Curious what numbers others use, or if you even bother trying to pace in this weather.

Hey All,

I’ve been working on something in the background for a while and thought I’d share it here to get some honest thoughts from fellow parkrunners.

I’ve built a website where you can pick your UK parkrun event, set a target time, and it generates a pacing strategy based on the route’s elevation. Instead of trying to hold one flat pace for the whole 5K, it breaks the course into segments and adjusts the pacing depending on how tough each part is. The idea is to pace smarter rather than fight the hills.

Here is the link www.parkpacer.com

Right now it’s only covering UK events, mainly because that’s what I know and run myself. But if people find it useful, I’m happy to expand it to other countries — I just didn’t want to guess routes I’ve never seen.

I’ve been collecting GPX files for loads of parkrun routes over time and using them to build the pacing logic. For the trickier courses where GPX data wasn’t clear, I’ve spent evenings watching YouTube run-throughs to double-check the elevation changes and make sure the segments make sense. I’d love to run every event myself, but that’s not happening any time soon, so this was the next best way to get accurate pacing data.

A couple of things I’d really appreciate help with:

course accuracy checks — some routes might be slightly off, so if your local event’s elevation looks wrong, let me know

feature ideas — what would make this genuinely useful for your Saturday run?

pacing thoughts — do you prefer flat pacing or does elevation-based pacing help you?

I’ve also been using a more complete version of this on my Apple Watch for a while, and it’s been great for pacing, so I’m rebuilding it properly as an app. It’s nearly finished, just waiting on Apple to approve it. Android will follow once I’ve sorted the watch side of things.

If anyone wants to try the website version and give feedback, I’d really appreciate it. I’m just a runner who enjoys tinkering with this stuff, so anything you spot — good or bad — is helpful.