Paul Sinton-Hewitt

I did all the work.

I imagined that I would only ever be the only person to be a volunteer at Park Run.

But on that first day...

Another four people pitched up who asked me if they could help.

So there were five volunteers on day one.

This is amazing.

Yeah, it was amazing.

When I was 24 and living in South Africa, I was a novice runner, a novice road runner.

And as part of my road running, I would set these targets, 10K, 15K, half marathon, and ultimately the marathon.

And we in South Africa at the time, there used to be these things called times trials.

And in Johannesburg, where I lived, there was probably four or five different clubs who had run a time trial during the week, Saturday, Thursday, Tuesday.

And you could choose between the 5K distance or the 8K distance.

And I used to choose the 5K distance because it was my home club that used to do it.

But the principle was you didn't have to tell anybody that you were coming.

You knew that it was always going to be there on that particular day.

You pitched up, you took part, and when you finished, you handed in your name.

And then the following week...

the local the national newspaper would produce the results of the second or the last page of the newspaper oh really on saturday and it would have my clubs it would have the other three clubs and we would compare and contrast but that was a very specific thing that as a runner an aspiring athlete i think you used it as a benchmark to see how you were doing on your progress now when i set up bushy

I obviously, I didn't know that it would become parkrun.

I didn't have an aspiration for it to become parkrun.