Don Hale Blog

Parkrun will not resume on 5 June after fewer than half of its venues approved the return of the 5km runs. The community event was suspended in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.   Organisers need a significant number of landowners to give permission for races to return to avoid overcrowding at the mass participation event. Parkrun UK says it hopes to resume all 5k events across England on 26 June, with a decision to be made on 11 June. Although more than 250 events do have landowner permission to return, this falls far short of the critical mass needed to prevent overwhelming those that have been given the go ahead," a statement read. ‘Opening a small subset of Parkruns is not viable.’ It added that a number of landowners had "responded positively" to resuming at a later date. Culture secretary Oliver Dowden, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and World Athletics president Lord Coe has  backed the return  of the event. There are 729 different locations across the UK h

An open letter from World Athletics President Sebastian Coe in support of Parkrun. As much as I have always felt that sport is an incredible force for good, I know that it also provides an opportunity to heal: to make us better. Coronavirus has left us with deep physical and emotional scars. I have been inspired by the ingenuity and creativity of so many people over the course of the pandemic. Individuals and communities finding hope, laughter and positivity in the darkest of times. But there is no escaping the fact that the events of the past twelve months have been devastating in so many ways. Of particular concern to me is the fact that inequalities in health and wellbeing have been exacerbated. We desperately need to find ways of getting fitter, stronger and more resilient. And we need to do it in a way that embraces and includes as much of the population as possible. As we tentatively look forward, and take those first steps back to normality, grassroots sport can, if we let it, o