The Feel Good Movement
My weekly dose of parkrun does me so much good - and I know it does the same for so many others too.
I was Run Director at my local parkrun on Saturday - celebrating parkrun's 20th birthday.
I absolutely love parkrun. Whatever else is going on in the world or in my life it's an hour on a Saturday morning when everything feels OK with the world.
I know how much good it does me & from speaking with countless people over the years I know so many other people feel the same.
I used to mainly run - but since parkrun restarted post-COVID I've been volunteering regularly too (largely because I realised how much it meant to me when it was no longer there). And I've got no doubt that the wellbeing hit that you get from volunteering is even better than the one from running 5K.
At Saturday's parkrun, half of our volunteers were from a local GP surgery - part of the work our volunteer team has been doing to engage local health professionals, to encourage them to suggest to people that they join us to volunteer, walk, jog or run. There’s plenty of evidence pointing to the benefits.
Happy 20th birthday parkrun - and here's to many more years for the feelgood movement!
And if you’ve been meaning to try out parkrun for a while, but never got round to it, you’ll be made very welcome - all the info, including how to register for free is here.
I enjoyed PotterNewton when I came across in April ‘23 - it was the last remaining Leeds course for me to try out - and it was lovely. Huddersfield is my spiritual ParkRun home and Oakwell being my closest. We’ve broadly knocked PR tourism on the head to keep travel related emissions down but having recently switched to a hybrid car Leeds runs are all back in reach. Will have to arrange another PotterNewton visit and see about chasing a course PR.