Bushy parkrun
Bushy Parkrun (styled as Bushy parkrun, formerly Bushy Park Time Trial) is a 5K run that takes place every Saturday morning at 9am in Bushy Park, Teddington, London. It has taken place every week since October 2004 and is the longest running of the Parkrun events. It is entirely run by volunteers, and is free to enter.
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Bushy parkrun 538 04 10 2014
History
The event started on 2 October 2004 with just 13 runners taking part in the inaugural event. The record number of runners completing the course is 1705 people for the 10th anniversary event. The course record for men of 13 minutes 48 seconds was set on 11 August 2012 and is held by Andrew Baddeley, the previous record of exactly 14 minutes was held by Australian Craig Mottram. Baddeley's time is also the fastest Parkrun time ran anywhere in the world. The women's record of 15:58 was set on 22 October 2011 by Justina Heslop. The previous record holder was Gladys Chemweno (16:11 on 8 May 2010) who beat Katrina Wootton's women's record of 16 minutes 20 seconds (1 January 2009). This performance beat Parkrun's longest standing record: Olympic Games silver medallist, Sonia O'Sullivan had previously held the record since 18 June 2005.
The organisers of Bushy Parkrun went on to form Parkrun (originally UKTT), an umbrella organisation that aimed to spread the event to other locations. In 2007, the Parkrun events began to be staged elsewhere in London and the UK. It has also since expanded into eleven other countries. The event changed its name from Bushy Park Time Trial in October 2008.
On 2 October 2014, Bushy Parkrun celebrated its 10th anniversary. The event that celebrated this was run on 4 October 2014 and contained a record 1,705 runners, beating the previous record of 1,184 on 11 January 2014, which was the 500th event.
Bushy Parkrun is highly rated by the runners who have taken part in it, with a 96% overall rating and 98% reporting that they would take part again, in the Runners World running event survey. The event is reported on a weekly basis by the local press, and the Parkrun phenomenon is gaining national exposure.
As with all other Parkrun events, runners must pre-register on the Parkrun website and bring their barcode with them to get a recorded time for the event. With this barcode, a runner can record a time at any Parkrun they choose to run at.