NEWS SPECIAL – BUSHY PARK CELEBRATES 1000th PARKRUN
Bushy Park’s world-famous parkrun will celebrate its 1000th event next Saturday morning (August 31st) with a possible record number of fun runners.
The 5km 9am Saturday morning format has been replicated all over the UK and the rest of the world with a total of over 2500 similar runs in 23 countries including Poland, Namibia, Japan, Australia and Malaysia.
Despite the rain and windy conditions last Saturday 1747 runners braved the elements to take part in the historic 999th Bushy parkrun supported by 82 volunteers.
Over 50000 runners have been registered for the Bush parkrun and participants have included Olympian Sir Mo Farah and this year’s 1500 metre Olympic bronze medallist Georgia Bell.
parkrun Chief Executive Russ Jeffreys said: “No-one could ever have envisaged the growth and success of parkrun all those years ago but its appeal remains the same today as it was then, the opportunity to meet people socially, to be active, to be outdoors and it’s free.”
The long-term ‘parkrun world record’ holder for parkrun was Andy Baddeley who clocked a lung-busting 13 minutes 48 seconds in Bushy Park in August 2012 and that was only broken in June 2023 last year by when Andy Butchart beat the record by just three seconds to clock 13mins 45secs at the Silverknowes parkrun in north-west Edinburgh.
Middle-distance runner Andy Baddeley, now 42, finished sixth in the 1500 metres final at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg and also competed at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. He finished second in the 1500 metres final at the European Cup in 2007 in Munich, with a time of 3:48.08 minutes.
No runner has completed all 1000 Bushy Park parkruns but Darren Wood has completed 907 since starting in the second event on October 9th 2004 with 258 of them at Bushy Park. He says: “parkrun has helped my mental health so much. It’s something that has always been there for me, every week, helping me through challenging times. Life is tough sometimes, but parkrun always reminds me ‘I can do this’.
Darren became the first participant to reach 250 and 500 milestones, and is likely to be the first to hit 1000 runs.
Now there are even milestone clubs, t-shirts, hoodies, vests, wristbands as well as pins for 10 (juniors and volunteers only) 25, 50, 100, 250, 500 and 1000 events.
The first ever event was in Bushy Park where 13 intrepid parkrunners got together on 2 October 2004 which will be the official anniversary for the 1000th parkrun.
Amazing facts about the Bushy parkrun up until 10th August
93,620 people have participated in Bushy parkrun since its first event in October 2004. The event typically has over 1,000 participants each week.
100,621 personal bests (PBs) have been achieved at Bushy parkrun, including 142 new PBs in the previous weekend.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PARKRUN GO TO: https://www.parkrun.org.uk/
