The parkrun (with a lower case “p”) is a number of more than 2000 5-kilometre (or 3.1 mile) events for walkers and runners which happen every Saturday morning in 22 nations all over the world. Additionally there's a childrens parkrun over 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) for children aged 4 to 14 held on a Sunday morning. The parkrun’s are free to enter and are staffed and put on by volunteers, though there are a small number of paid personnel in its headquarters. The parkrun was started by Paul Sinton-Hewitt with the very first one getting organised at Bushy Park in London, the UK on 2nd of October 2004. The event progressed following that getting replicated in various other UK venues. The runs were at first called the UK Time Trials with the brand, parkrun, initially getting used in 2008 as the expansion started to occur in additional places. The parkruns take place in various sorts of sites including parks, nature parks, forests, estuaries and rivers, lakes, shorelines, as well as in prisons. The participants who have finished 50, 100, or 500 of the runs are provided a complimentary tee shirt. When a participant has signed up on the parkrun website and gets a barcode, they can travel to and complete any globally where they are often generally known as "tourists". The record holder for the parkrun for males is Andrew Baddeley with a time of thirteen minutes and 48 seconds and the female record is Lauren Reid who has a time of 15 minutes and 45 seconds.

Paul Sinton-Hewitt was presented with a CBE by the Queen for the services to grassroots sport in 2014 for what the run has grown to become. At present you will find very nearly 7 million participants listed globally with parkrun. This rapid growth is primarily due to its simpleness and convenience. Participants only need to register online once and then simply turn up at any parkrun event and just run. An inclusive philosophy can also be most likely one factor because participants consist of competitive and quick club runners to people who just walk the 5km. Wheelchair users, those running with strollers with kids and people running with their animals are encouraged. The runs have been heralded as one of the best public health initiatives in our time for endorsing physical activity as well as being a social movement for the common good.

Each parkrun event is staffed and carried out by volunteers with the required accessories given by the parkrun headquarters. The volunteers are considered the heart of the parkrun movement and their efforts are recognized on the parkrun’s site each week. Recently the writer, Eileen Jones travelled around the UK and went to many of the 730 parkrun places there and talked to runners and walkers and discussed the way a 5km run held on a Saturday morning had transformed their lives. Her work was published in a book having the title “how parkrun changed our lives”.

At the beginning of March in 2020, nearly all parkrun runs were being shut down around the world as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak. At the start of 2021 events did start to return, especially since the crisis began to be controlled in some nations around the world.