Parkrun to return

Plans are being put in place to resume the Saturday morning runs

Runners could be back on Greenham Common for a weekly parkrun in the very near future, as the event announces plans to return.

The mass participation events were halted across the globe by the coronavirus pandemic in March. But today parkrun’s global chief executive, Nick Pearson, announced plans to resume the runs by the end of October.

It will be much welcomed news for the hundreds of runners who pounded the 5km course around the common every Saturday morning.

The events will now be run within parkrun’s Covid-19 framework and Mr Pearson said in the coming weeks they will be working with local volunteers and landowners to ensure a safe return.

“We’ve long understood that human beings have an innate need to be with one another,” he said. “To talk, to laugh, to support, to share experiences. This is a watershed moment. Parkrun will return. We will be back together again.”

Mr Pearson added that a recent ‘intent to return’ survey indicated that around 80 per cent of participants were keen to return to parkruns within the month and that confidence in doing so was increasing all of the time.

Parkrun is a free 5km event that takes place on a Saturday morning and was founded in London in 2002. Since then has expanded to 729 different locations across the UK, with more than 2.35m runners finishing a 34,8563,836 runs.