Burnley Rounders League player clocks up 130 parkruns in 102 locations
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
The parkrun is a 5k run or walk every Saturday morning, held all over the world, it’s free, and is a way of keeping fit and healthy, open to people of all abilities.
Paula, now 53, already plays rounders in the Burnley Rounders League, also qualifying as an umpire, and netball.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdAfter running at school, she got back into it and in her 50th year in 2018 she decided to run 50 park runs with her partner David Dockerty, who works at Rossendale Radio.
Unfortunately David broke his leg competing in a fell race after he had ran 48 so Paula has been running them alone since then, even getting up during lockdown to do 5k when park runs were temporarily halted.
She has now completed 130 official park runs in a staggering 102 different places.
“It does mean getting up early every Saturday morning and travelling further and further to try and find a new one but the aim is to keep running new courses,” said Paula of Bury.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“I have done park runs in Belfast, Edinburgh, Newcastle and I did my 100th in Bushy Park in London, the site of the original parkrun.
“My fastest time is 26 minutes and 55 seconds but I am happy if I get under 30 minutes now.
“My favourite is Crosby, on the beach, and the hardest was Cliffe Castle in Keighley.
“I have had all kinds of chaos – I once turned up at Pontefract Parkrun only for it to be called off for frost so I had to get over to Doncaster where I was 20 minutes late but they let me start as long as I beat the tailwalker – which thankfully I did!
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“There are all kinds of challenges within parkrun – the alphabetical parkrun challenge, where you try and run a parkrun beginning with every letter of the alphabet – and the Wilson Index where you get points for running an inaugural parkrun. It does never stop!
“I don’t know what really the aim is – I guess to continue to do new parkruns and perhaps go abroad to run different ones.”