Paul Sinton-Hewitt, the founder of parkrun, was born in Zimbabwe and moved to South Africa at the age of five, where he was brought up in care with his two siblings. Always a keen middle distance runner, he was a second for a friend in one of South Africa's most gruelling road races. Eventually he moved to the UK to work in IT and raise a family.
After a perfect storm of redundancy, marriage breakdown and an injury which prevented him from running with his own club, he decided he'd start a time trial in a local park, for his running club pals. The only proviso that they had to have coffee and cake with him afterwards.
Twenty years later, that timed run that he started has outpaced anything he could have envisaged and turned into parkrun. The 5k run around local parks on a Saturday morning, has gone global and the parkrun community has hundreds of thousands of people running or volunteering as stewards every week. Stephen Smith finds out what makes Paul Sinton-Hewitt run.
PRESENTER: Stephen Smith
PRODUCTION TEAM
Producers: Julie Ball, Natasha Fernandes, Farhana Haider Editor: Tom Bigwood Production Co-ordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Sound: Neil Churchill
CONTRIBUTORS
Roun Barry, School friend Hugh Brasher, Director, London Marathon Bruce Fordyce, Marathon runner Duncan Gaskell, parkrunner and friend Russ Jeffereys - CEO, parkrun Eileen Jones, Author and parkrunner Joanne Sinton-Hewitt, Wife
Steve Barclay
Chris Packham
Nan Goldin
Hanif Kureishi
Gillian Keegan
Paul Nowak
Sarah Lancashire
Nigella Lawson
Wes Streeting
Oliver Dowden
Olena Zelenska
Joe Lycett
Gareth Bale
Pat Cullen
Kemi Badenoch
Nicola Benedetti
Jeremy Hunt
Erling Haaland
Lula
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