Parkrun Paris – Bois de Boulogne

I was first introduced to Parkrun by my running club, or rather I was first taken to a Parkrun by members of my running club. I’d heard about these events taking place all over the world at 9am on Saturday mornings, but I had never dared to venture to one before.

What is Parkrun?

To put it simply, a Parkrun is a free five kilometre (just over 3 miles) run or walk in a local park that is timed. They take place every Saturday morning and are organised by volunteers, who will run or walk them too when they aren’t busy volunteering. This means they know what it’s like to do what you are doing, so they offer fantastic encouragement and support. There’s loads more information as well as locations on the Parkrun website.

My Parkrun history

After my head decided it couldn’t cope back in 2015, I found that exercise really helped me fight depression and anxiety. Swimming is my favourite exercise, but as you can’t always do that when out on the road I went to the local gym, stepped nervously on the running machine and started to walk. Then I walked quicker, then a sort of jog thing, then I got out of breath and it was back to walking. This carried on for quite a few months until I finally reached my goal of being able to run for 15 minutes without stopping, or dying.

My next running goal was, rather ambitiously, the Marrakesh half marathon in January 2017. I survived! And when we returned back to the UK, we both joined the wonderful Kimberley and District Striders (KADS) running club. In January of this year I decided to try a Parkrun, safely accompanied by several members of the running club. I’d avoided Parkruns for ages because I stupidly thought that I would be laughed at, the slowest and left behind, get lost and generally make a fool of myself, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Parkruns all have a beginner’s briefing so you know what to do, and they are marshalled by volunteers so you know where to go. Best of all they have a ‘Tail Walker’ who goes around with the slowest person to offer encouragement and so you are never last. Everyone claps, cheers and encourages each other and the atmosphere is only competitive at the front – the rest of us are competing against ourselves and our times on previous Parkruns. At my local runs if you get a personal best time, you get to ring a bell and have your photo taken to mark the occasion (but only if you want to).

While in Paris we stayed in our motorhome at Camping de Paris, which is situated in Bois de Boulogne, a huge park to the west of the city. One of the Paris Parkruns takes place here, and as we were in town we thought it would be rude not to join in. We sussed out that the start was a couple of kilometres from our campsite using a map on their Parkrun course page, helpfully titled ‘For Our English Friends’ (it’s in English while everything else is in French), but as we’d managed to get lost in the park a few times – there are loads of trails and paths to explore, we set the alarm for super early.

It was still dark when we were beeped awake. Leaving the motorhome at just after 8am the sky was brightening up but it was still chilly so we wrapped up as warm as we dare – unsure if we would be able to leave things somewhere safe while we ran. We found a gathering of chilly-looking lyrca-clad folks stood around where we thought the start should be and soon discovered that nearly everyone was from an English-speaking nation. There was a family from Australia, a couple from South Africa and quite a lot of ex-pat and holidaying Brits. The big surprise was how few French people there were. 

Soon we were joined by Laurent (the chap in purple in the photo above), the race director for the day, who organised his team of three marshals, then set about giving us all a briefing in both English and French. There seemed to be less rules here than at the UK Parkruns I’ve done. At home dogs must be on a short lead, but here they joined in and ran freely (nearly taking out a runner or two) but then there were dogs all over the park running freely, so why would you stop them?

The main difference was the number of runners. Back home we have several Parkruns within a half hour drive of us, and each get around 100 – 200 folks taking part. In Paris I had expected loads of people, but there were only 45 runners, and it’s not like there weren’t hundreds of folks running around in the park, they just didn’t want to join the Parkrun. I overheard one of the marshalls (an English lady) saying it’s basically an ex-pat event and the French haven’t taken to it. I have no idea why, but to me that’s a big shame.

After the briefing it was time for the off and all thoughts of being chilly disappeared as I headed off at top speed – I can’t help myself, it always happens when I run in a group. Jay had done a 16 mile training run the day before, so opted to jog around with me (yes my top speed is his slow speed) and enjoy the event. We got chatting to a few folks as we went around, or rather I was rasping out the odd sentence on any slightly down hill section of the course.

Less than 30 minutes later it was all over and we were cheered over the line. Laurent timed us as we crossed the line and we were given a finishers chip. I took a photo as I was the 28th finisher, probably the lowest number  I’ll ever get! I took my personal barcode and the finisher’s chip to one of the volunteers who scanned them both, recording my details into the system.

A little later I got an email with my finishing time. At the start of the year I set a goal to run a timed 5k in under 30 minutes (my Strava recording of runs on my phone is a tad erratic so doesn’t really count), and at the Paris Parkrun I achieved my goal – I crossed the line in 28 minutes and 57 seconds. I was so happy, I treated myself to a Pain au Chocolat for breakfast, and a cake from a boulangerie at dinner.

After our run to the Eiffel Tower when we arrived in Paris, this, for me, was the perfect way to end our trip to Paris. There is still so much more to see in the city, but it gives us a good excuse to come back another time – especially now we know how accessible it is in a motorhome.

Ju x