Not Just a Walk in the ‘Park’

ON A CLOUDY JUNE MORNING with air as moist as a devil’s food cake, Frank and Larry are running late. It’s their shared birthday, and the scores of people gathered on the Paint Branch Trail in College Park are waiting to serenade them. Meanwhile, a trio of tweenaged boys erupts in laughter when one realizes he’s wearing two similar but undeniably different shoes.

Footwear foibles aside, it’s a typical Saturday for devotees of College Park’s parkrun, where camaraderie has helped turn this offshoot of an international movement into the biggest of its kind in North America.

Born in the United Kingdom in 2004 and now operating in 22 countries, parkrun is a free 5K that takes place at the same time, on the same course, every week. Its volunteer organizers include University of Maryland faculty members Andrea Zukowski and Colin Phillips, a married couple who started the local parkrun in 2016.

Zukowski, a research scientist in linguistics who’d previously been “sedentary my whole life,” discovered a love for running at age 49 and wanted to give others a chance at the same revelation.

At first, roughly a dozen people regularly turned out. Today, some 200 show up at the starting point on the Paint Branch Trail every Saturday at 9 a.m. Many stick around afterward for coffee and brunch at The Board and Brew.

Social connections are key to parkrun. “You’re running for the friends around you,” says math Professor Larry Washington.