Pollok Parkrun: A run for all, for all who run.
Nearly 250 Parkrunners gather at the start of the Pollok Park route.
Source: Donald Erskine
Every Saturday morning at 9:30 am, the north wood in Pollok Park is transformed into local runner’s Eden. Two loops of the woods, with a few climbs, twists and turns, create the 5km circuit that is Pollok parkrun.
To the innocent bystander, who’s out for a leisurely morning walk, 200-odd runners firing off the start line will either look like sheer madness or great fun. Established in the late 2000s, Pollok parkrun is Scotland’s longest-running organised weekly, free, 5k.
Run Director for Saturday’s event (#633) and long-time volunteer Alan Dempster has been with the event from almost the beginning. Talking about the inception of the idea and its growth, Alan said: “Pollok parkrun started in December 2008 and was formed by my friend Richard Leyton and Iain Brown, it was the first Parkrun in Scotland. Richard brought the idea up from London, where he had attended Bushy parkrun – the first ever parkrun.”
“To begin with, there were only 20-40 people running, I was one of them and started volunteering after that. The numbers grew steadily: up until the COVID pandemic, we were getting close to 500 people every week. These days, due to an increase in other parkruns starting up nearby – for e.g., Queens parkrun – the numbers have diluted a bit and average out around 200-250 each week.”
Alan is quick to stress that parkruns are inclusive events and are never referred to as a race, it’s all about the run and not about how quick you finish. They do monitor every week’s results, though, and they can all be found on their website. While the results pages allow some glory to be given to quick times and PB’s a plenty (the all-time record being a lightning-quick 14:57). It’s the total figures that show off the behemoth creation that is Pollok parkrun properly: 633 events, with 206,471 runners finishing over the course of those runs – that’s over 1 million accumulative kilometres of trodden trail!
A victim of its own success, much like Bushy parkrun, the concept has been copied and pasted and as such, has now resulted in there being six weekly parkruns across Glasgow alone. Organising the event doesn’t come without its difficulties, though. Alan explained: “Our main challenges are getting enough volunteers to fill each role every week and managing the interaction between the mass of runners and other park users, we’ve never had any serious incident though.”
With the ever-evolving, snowball concept of the parkrun still picking up speed, what is next for this stalwart of Scottish running? Alan sees the future bringing the already ability-inclusive event to more people by encouraging walkers to take part, he said: “Parkrun will be running a campaign from October onwards, aimed at attracting more people to come and take part. This will be directly aimed at those looking to take on the 5k route while walking. It’s going to be called parkwalk.”
With the will and passion of dedicated runners and volunteers, the Pollok parkrun continues to provide a space for the local running communities to gather. An inclusive space that is only getting more and more welcoming to all ability levels, each event still faces its own challenges and opportunities. But, just like with running, there is only one answer to keep moving forward – head down, one foot after the other.