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Tailenders Running Club

4 months ago

From today's Guardian:

United by football – and parkrunning

By the eternal flame, there is a vast statue of the unknown soldier, stretched prone, his right arm reaching out towards an unseen finish line. About 100 yards away, a gaggle of runners engage in a slightly awkward group warm-up while a terrier called Phoebe scurries about in a frenzy of excitement. This is the Kazan parkrun and, like so much else in Russia this month, the World Cup has made it a little different. Parkrunning is a phenomenon that began in Bushy Park, Teddington, in October 2004. The idea is simple: a timed 5km run on a properly measured course, the ethos being very much about participation rather than competition. It has proved wildly successful, and now stretches to 1,533 parks across 20 countries. A subculture of “parkrun tourists” has developed, as runners “collect” races along various themes. More than 20 runners, for instance, have ticked off all 52 London parkruns, while a recent trend is to try to complete a list of parkruns starting with every letter of the alphabet (apart from X; there are no Xs). Zs, understandably, are prized, which is why one visitor from London made the trip to Zhukovsky, about 25 miles from Moscow, on the Saturday before the World Cup began. The Kazan parkrun began in April 2015. It features a brutal hill in the middle of each of its two laps, and attracts an average of 29 runners. On Saturday, there were 38, at least five of them British, including Simon Marland, the secretary of Bolton Wanderers, who came a highly creditable fourth. The week before, there had been around 30 Australians. The local reaction was bemused but welcoming, as the World Cup does its job of bringing different cultures of together. Jonathan Wilson ... See MoreSee Less