{"id":156232,"date":"2021-11-19T10:18:07","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T23:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=156232"},"modified":"2021-11-22T11:17:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T00:17:57","slug":"read-an-extract-from-on-every-saturday-a-celebration-of-parkrun-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2021\/11\/19\/read-an-extract-from-on-every-saturday-a-celebration-of-parkrun-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Read an extract from On Every Saturday – a celebration of parkrun in Australia!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"On<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Every Saturday morning, tens of thousands of Australians come together in hundreds of locations, right across the country, to participate in the extraordinary community-based, volunteer-led, five-kilometre phenomenon called parkrun. On Every Saturday<\/a><\/strong> is a new full-colour book by David Crook (Australian diplomat and self-professed mid-life crisis runner). It’s a joyful celebration of Australia\u2019s first ten parkrun years, as well as the power of community and the spirit of ‘getting out there’.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we have an extract from On Every Saturday for you to check out – read on!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

\"On<\/a>On Every Saturday<\/em>: Introduction<\/strong><\/h4>\n

by David Crook<\/strong><\/p>\n

parkrun: a timed, five-kilometre event, held every Saturday morning, at over 400 Australian locations, where everyone is welcome to participate \u2013 to walk, jog, run, spectate or volunteer \u2013 and it\u2019s absolutely free.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

On every Saturday morning, tens of thousands of Australians come together in hundreds of locations, right across the country, to participate in the extraordinary community-based, volunteer-led phenomenon called parkrun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From its first Australian event, on the Gold Coast in April 2011, parkrun has grown to over 400 Australian locations and over 990,000 registered participants, inside its first decade. In those first ten years, Australian parkrunners completed an astonishing 9,810,901 parkruns \u2013 walking, jogging or running \u2013 at an amazing 78,533 events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, on the first Saturday of its second Australian decade, 3 April 2021, another 47,076 people walked, jogged or ran a parkrun, with more than 4000 others participating as volunteers to make these parkruns possible. Despite the interruptions of the 2020 and early 2021 COVID shutdown periods, parkrun in Australia was well and truly back in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book celebrates Australia\u2019s first ten parkrun years. It outlines parkrun\u2019s history, in Australia and across the world; provides examples of Australia\u2019s amazing parkruns and the people who\u2019ve created them; explains how easy it is to become involved; and describes the different forms that involvement can take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After ten years of parkrun in Australia, it\u2019s easy to forget that it\u2019s still a relatively new phenomenon \u2013 that there wasn\u2019t anything like it in Australia just a few short years ago. As Tim Oberg, the person who brought parkrun to Australia, says, that short history means we don\u2019t yet know the long-term impact that parkrun will deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018When I was growing up,\u2019 Tim says, \u2018there wasn\u2019t anywhere you could go for a group five-kilometre Saturday morning run. Now we see whole families coming to walk or run or volunteer. We have babies going round the course in prams who\u2019ll grow up with parkrun as a regular part of their lives. Who can guess at the long-term health benefits that will bring?\u2019 I wrote this book because I\u2019m grateful to all of the parkrun volunteers and HQ staff who make the Australian parkrun story possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘It\u2019s easy to forget that it\u2019s still a relatively new phenomenon \u2013 that there wasn\u2019t anything like it in Australia just a few short years ago.’<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My own parkrun story started when friends invited me to go along to their \u2018local\u2019 parkrun in Evesham in the UK. Now my local is North Sydney \u2013 and the idea that there is a fantastic timed event, organised entirely by volunteers, right at the end of my street, that is on every Saturday, and is absolutely free to participate in, is still a little hard for me to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For existing Australian parkrunners, I hope this book tells you at least a few things about parkrun that you didn\u2019t already know. For parkrunners\u2019 families and friends, I hope that after reading the book, you might think your parkrunner is not quite so crazy as you\u2019d thought. You might even think that parkrun is something you\u2019d like to try. For people who know nothing about parkrun, or perhaps know just a little, but have never gone along, I hope you might consider what parkrun could become for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for everyone who reads it, I hope this book has emphasised that parkrun is a place where everyone is welcome \u2013 to walk, to jog, to run, to spectate or to volunteer. That it isn\u2019t just about the walk or run \u2013 and it certainly isn\u2019t about a person\u2019s finish time \u2013 it\u2019s about so much more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As parkrun\u2019s founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, describes it, \u2018parkrun is a social movement for the common good\u2019. Free, for everyone, forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014On Every Saturday<\/a><\/em> by David Crook and Lisa Millar (Brio Books) is out now.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Christmas<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Crook, with a foreword by Lisa Millar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":156241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[715,9511,13177,12985,13859,13988,1910,7517,13989,13987,13990],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/OnEverySaturday-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156232"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156305,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156232\/revisions\/156305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}