The man responsible for getting hundreds of people out of bed for a run or walk around L’ancresse Common every Saturday has said one of the best things about parkrun is how it means different things to everyone taking part.
Paul Sinton Hewitt was a guest speaker at the Guernsey Literary Festival last weekend where he discussed his book ‘One Small Step – The Incredible Story of parkrun’ before taking questions from the audience, predominantly made up of regular parkrunners and volunteers.
He said that he more often walks the 5km when he visits different courses now, but his sense of fulfilment has grown along with the parkrun community.
The day before his talk, Mr Sinton Hewitt, his wife, and BBC journalist and fellow author Sophie Raworth had joined 200 other people for the weekly parkrun at L’ancresse.
Ms Raworth was also in Guernsey for the Literary Festival, discussing her own running themed memoir, ‘Running on Air’.
She told Express that although her preference is running longer distances, she enjoys taking part in parkrun too.
“I love parkrun. parkrun is great, although it’s short, but it’s really hard work.
“The marathon is probably still my favourite race, because I love the distance. It’s really challenging, and you have to really work hard for it so it feels all the more rewarding once you’ve done it. You can’t just rock up and do it.
“Ultras as well, I love, an ultra being anything longer than a marathon.
“I’m going off to the Alps in the summer and that’s amazing, you’re hiking up run, but then you run the flat bits, and you run down, and it’s just incredible to be out in nature.”
Ms Raworth said she has been tempted to visit Guernsey previously to do either the marathon or ultra, but they are both usually scheduled very close to the London Marathon which she is a regular participant at.
Her first was in 2011, but before that she said she wasn’t a regular runner at all.
“I was never a runner, and I didn’t do any exercise at all in my 20s and 30s, until my late 30s,” she recalled.
“I started running my late 30s, and I just did two half marathons and stopped, and then I ran my first marathon when I was 42 and I thought I was just too old at that point, but I just did one and then I discovered I wasn’t too old, and I kept going, and I got faster and faster in my 40s and 50s.
People always come up to me and say, ‘I wish I could do what you do, but I’m too old’, and they’re always younger than I am, so I decided I was going to write something that could sort of show people it really is never too late.”
Mr Sinton Hewitt was a regular runner until injury forced him to rest in the early 2000s.
That led him to look for a new way of embracing the community aspect of running, as much as the running itself.
He founded the Bushy Park Time Trial, which later became parkrun, in 2004.
For him, the ethos remains the same now, with thousands of parkruns across the world, as it did when he launched the first in London.
“The first principle is that it’s on every week,” he explained. “The second principle is that it’s free, forever. And everybody is welcome. Everybody can have the opportunity to experience it.”
With ongoing debates among participants online about whether parkrun is a race or not, and with Nike using advertising billboards to tell people “you didn’t come all this way for a walk in the park”, Mr Sinton Hewitt was firm in saying that is not what parkrun is about.
He said it is for everybody and everybody experiences it in a unique way, which is exactly what he wants it to be.
“I started out walking (on Saturday), and I ended up meeting a lady who was on her second ever parkrun, and she was struggling to walk. We started chatting, and in fact, I did probably three of the kilometres with her, and she ran the whole way talking non stop constantly, and when she finished, she wasn’t out of breath. I think she understood a little bit more about herself on having done that, and because of that I met a really interesting person.
“So, as I was saying, parkrun is not really about the run, it’s about who you meet, it’s about the chats that you have.
“The course here is extraordinary,” he added. “You’re following a path that under normal circumstances you would never do so I’ve learned and I’ve discovered something new. And that is what parkrun is about for me. I’m always discovering things I would never have ever imagined before.”
Mr Sinton Hewitt and his wife have both done more than 600 parkruns at more than 350 locations.
He often arrives quietly, shying away from the ‘celebrity’ status he has achieved in the parkrun community.
He said he always makes time to thank the volunteers (pictured top) for their efforts, and to acknowledge them because they make parkrun what it is, for everyone else.
“You’ve got to understand that, like the lady today, she didn’t really know what she was coming to,” Mr Sinton Hewitt said. “It was her second time, and she experienced something. I think she’s looking for something in her life and it is possible that parkrun will be it.
“The thing to do is to make sure, like everything in life, you take it easy, go slowly and suddenly you can find the things that you like. There are always going to be things that are more difficult so you can try and minimise those and I think with parkrun, you can do that.”
