Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of the first parkrun event.
Parkrun is a collection of 5km events for walkers, runners and volunteers which take place every Saturday morning at more than 2,500 locations in 22 countries across six continents.
Here is a timeline of how the event grew:
– October 2 2004
Parkrun was founded by Paul Sinton-Hewitt at Bushy Park in Teddington, west London.
It was a free, timed 5k run, known then as the Bushy Park Time Trial, which attracted just 13 runners and five volunteers.
– 2004 to 2005
The event was happening every Saturday, even on Christmas Day.
It had 155 participants at its peak.
– 2006 to 2007
Parkrun went from a single weekly event to seven per week in the space of a year.
Runs were taking place in Wimbledon, Richmond, Banstead, Leeds and Brighton.
The first international event was held in Zimbabwe.
– 2008 to 2009
Another 20 new events were created, along with the first Scottish run in Glasgow, and the first Welsh event in Cardiff.
The first event in Denmark also took place.
In 2009, 112,260 runs were recorded, with 11 across the UK.
– 2010 to 2011
Parkrun arrived in Northern Ireland.
Events took place in Australia, South Africa and Poland.
A special event was held at the UK military base Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.
A 2k weekly junior parkrun began, aimed at four to 14-year-olds.
By the end of 2010 there were 54 events and more than 100,000 runners.
– 2012 to 2013
Parkrun expanded to New Zealand, the US and Ireland.
– 2014 to 2015
Events took place in Singapore, Russia, Italy and France.
Weekly attendance exceeded 60,000 for the first time.
– 2016 to 2017
Parkrun launched in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
The event was also introduced in prisons.
At the start of 2017 there were just over 1,000 parkrun events across the world, with 44% in 15 countries outside the UK.
Over the following 12 months it launched in another 300 locations, with the share of non-UK events rising to 48%.
– 2018 to 2019
The first parkrun at a young offender institution took place.
The event launched in Japan and Malaysia.
It reached a record six million registrations.
– 2020 to 2021
More than 400,000 people took part in a parkrun or junior parkrun on a single weekend.
The coronavirus pandemic hit and events were paused worldwide.
– 2022 to 2023
New milestone clubs were created for volunteering and walking/running to show that all participation is equal.
A parkwalk campaign was launched to encourage more people to attend the event.
More than 2,300 events occurred worldwide and there were more than nine million participants.
– 2024
Parkrun marks its 20th anniversary on Wednesday October 2 with participants encouraged to join celebrations at their local event on Saturday October 5.
