Running is getting its second wind
Don’t forget your parkrun barcode!
As a dedicated parkrun enthusiast, I wanted to see whether my recent interest in running was a more widespread trend
There are 3 million runners registered with parkrun globally (that’s a 5km run every Saturday at 9am), with a total of 227,310 people turning out last week (12th Feb ’22) at 1,715 locations
Bushy Park, London, was the most popular location with 1,123 participants and is also the location of the first ever parkrun event held back in 2004
And congrats to the 4 people who have taken part in over 700 events — that’s over 13 years worth of Saturday 5Ks
227,310 runners turned out for parkrun last week, with Bushy Park being the most popular location (1,123 participants)
Looking beyond parkrun, running had been growing in popularity for a while:
- Participation in official events* grew almost every year since 2001, hitting a peak of 9.1m runners in 2016. However, this started to drop to 7.9m participants in 2018 (a drop of 13%)
- In 2016–18, Marathon participation has stayed fairly level with c. 1.1 million participants in 2018
But this trend may have been reversed by the pandemic:
- April 2020 was Strava biggest month of growth, with 320k new sign ups (up 32%), and 890k athletes took part in their first 5K running challenge, an increase of 79% on May 2019
- Garmin shows a similar trend, with indoor running in Italy and Spain up in May 2020 (by 130% and 84% respectively)
- Interestingly, the Germany and the UK had a bigger increase in outdoor running at the start of the first lockdown (up 90% and 50% respectively), with indoor running actually dropping in the UK (down 50%)
- And despite all official events being cancelled, the number of marathon-distance runs completed on Strava was up by 3x in 2020 vs. 2019
Finally a few fun facts:
- Which is the most popular running route in the UK? Battersea Park in London with 26,000 people completing a run in the park during lockdown
- Where is running most popular? Ireland leads the way here with 0.5% of their population participating in official events. This compares to the next highest countries, the Netherlands and UK, on 0.2%
- What if I want to do a marathon? Check out the World Marathon’s website, which has 1,710 different events to choose from
Official events*: includes events from 5km to a full marathon (42kms)
Source: parkrun; parkrun stats; World Marathons; The State of Running 2019; Runners World; Strava
