A runner who has taken part in 913 parkruns – more than anyone else in the event’s 20-year history – said the community it creates is now more important to him than the running.
Parkrun started on Saturday October 2 2004 as the Bushy Park Time Trial when 13 runners joined a free timed 5k run at Bushy Park, south-west London, which was organised by runner Paul Sinton-Hewitt while he was recovering from injury.
Like Mr Sinton-Hewitt, Darren Wood was a member of south-west London running club Ranelagh Harriers but missed the first event because he did not believe he was fast enough to join a time trial.
“I’m not a pioneer but I have been around since the second one,” he told the PA news agency.
“This is why parkrun introduced parkwalk because they don’t want to put people off who think they need to be fast.”
Mr Wood, 42, from Carshalton, south London, has taken part at 96 different locations and has volunteered 410 times.
“It used to be about the running for me very much early on but I think my approach has changed and it is more about the community,” he told PA.
“It’s no longer Saturday, it’s ‘parkrun day’.
“It’s about going there and spending time with your parkrun family.”
Mr Wood led the team which set up Edenbrook parkrun, on the Hampshire/Surrey border, in 2022.
“I had done so many and I wanted to give something back. It was kind of a thank-you,” he said.
“It was challenging but the reward at the end of the day, it was worth it.”
He has now stepped away from being event director but said: “I know it’s in safe hands with that team.
“They have so many people who don’t want to run, they just want to volunteer. Some of them don’t have that much outside parkrun.
“I was in the same situation as them after I had been through my divorce.
“Parkrun was the one thing I had to meet people. What did I do on that Christmas Day? I went to parkrun to see people. I had no-one else.
“It’s one of the great things. It’s about these people who maybe have very little outside it but they get to meet new people and build new friendships.
“It’s not just the free run, it’s how it’s grown.”
Mr Wood has struggled with his mental health in the past and said, during his darkest times, parkrun was the stable part of his life and was there for him every Saturday morning, a welcoming place where he would not be judged.
Now he enjoys encouraging others to join the parkrun community: “You will never regret it, just take the leap.
“Go and experience it once, it will change your life 100%. Everyone is so welcoming.
“It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you are. Go and experience that community, you won’t meet a finer bunch of people.”
He remembers one man who was overweight and said he would never be able to run but, with encouragement, started jogging for short periods and was eventually able to jog 5k.
“That has saved his life,” Mr Wood said. “That has clearly saved the NHS some money. For him it’s a lifesaver.”
Mr Wood, who has two sons aged nine and 12, works in card payment solutions and sometimes travels for work so has joined parkruns in the US, Netherlands, Poland and Finland.
He has been encouraged to introduce himself to the event director if he joins a different parkrun and finds the attention quite embarrassing but tells PA it is worth it “if it encourages someone doing their first parkrun to think nothing is impossible”.
He has also worked with prisons, collecting unwanted running kit for inmates to use, and particularly with Feltham Young Offenders Institution in west London.
“For them to chat to normal people who come in there and show interest in them as individuals is what means the world to them,” he said.
“That to me is one of the most rewarding parts, to run with these lads and give them a bit of normality.
“To see their little faces light up is just ‘wow’. I can’t describe it. If you could measure success by smiles, it blows it out of the water.”
– This weekend will see parkrun’s 20th anniversary celebrated across the UK and the world, with communities encouraged to come together at their local parkruns in a celebration of the milestone on Saturday.
