Paul Sinton-Hewitt

And then I wouldn't really be able to contribute in the conversation.

They'd be really angry.

high on the energy.

And so it became, you know, a little bit of a negative scene for me.

And so what I needed to do was to make sure that I saw my friends every single week so that the health benefits for me were all mental to begin with.

having people around who I could socialize with, that I could be outdoors doing some activity.

But it was a really important part in getting me back onto the road of recovery.

And today still, I'm not running at the moment because I've got arthritis in my left knee.

What I am doing is I've gone back to volunteering and I'm doing

almost every single week, I go down and volunteer at a park run.

And for me, it's giving me almost the same benefits as when I was running.

I'm arriving at the park run in the morning somewhat...

closed, not really willing to open myself to anybody, but by the time I've left having volunteered, I'm my normal self again, filled with the joy of life and so on.

So it's a very important thing, not just for the physical side, but really mostly about

Seeing your friends, getting the mental exercise, and then if you need it, you've got a place where you can expose your problems to your friends and they can be there to help you.

Well, I think you're right when you say it was a subconscious decision.

However, I would say that over the years, very consciously, we picked up on the things that we knew were good and we've

built them into the fabric of what we're doing.

I must say that, you know, throughout Parkrun's life, I wasn't the creator and the strategist on everything.

There have been a lot of people who've contributed to making Parkrun what it is.