Stand on the corner of Park Road and Chestnut Avenue at 9am on a Saturday, look south, and a kilometre away through the misty morning stillness a dark, rumbling cloud is visible, closing fast. Out of the centre of it, on the wide strip of grass between the road and the trees, colours emerge, then shapes, and just as you expect to hear Ride of the Valkyries and consider diving for cover, you hear the thunder of feet: runners.

At first it’s the quick ones, small and light, their feet tapping the grass as they pass. Then the rest come, almost 1,000 of them pouring past, the individual shapes now more varied, young and old, fat and thin, breathing hard already as they turn a right angle on to the path with 4k to go. Then they are gone, stretching out into the distance like bunting around the perimeter of the park.

It’s an unusual, even beautiful sight, seen here in Bushy Park, south-west London, every week since 2004, when 13 people turned up. Now parkrun is a huge weekly event, with dozens of sister runs across the world. Most of them are not like Bushy (as you gradually begin to call it, around the time you find yourself describing distances in ‘k’). I have run about a dozen now, from a Cheshire mudfest in Marple to the pancake-flat Tarmac speedway of Dulwich Park in south London. Most are more like that original event, a flashmob of a few dozen ordinary joggers who happen to be doing their three weekend miles in the same park at the same time.

But even the smaller ones share a spirit and a remarkably broad cast. The hardcore is probably mass marathon fodder like me, but you can usually rely on seeing pensioners, kids, groups of mates, parkrun addicts (who wear T-shirts testifying to their 50th, 100th or 250th event) and usually, on the flatter courses, at least one parent pushing a buggy. I imagine the parkrun outposts that have sprung up in places as far apart as Michigan, Tasmania and Gdansk are not dissimilar, although the start line in Camp Bastion is probably less varied.

There are also serious athletes – the Bushy Park course record is held by Olympic 1500m runner Andy Baddeley (Mo Farah is 20th) – and even small events can offer a humbling chance to see that, however well your training is going, there is someone who lives down the road from you who can run 5k in the 15 minutes or so it takes to walk to the corner shop and back.

It’s a non-elitist, unifying thing, though, which stems from its non-competitive nature. The free entry (you need to register online to get your name and time recorded, but you’re welcome to just turn up and run; it’s your park), the volunteers who turn out to make it happen, the vagaries of course marking that means 5k is sometimes more of a guideline, make it an unintimidating place for the novice runner.

The event was originally called a time trial and this is how people seem to run it, testing themselves, not bunching together to beat each other as they might in a road race. It’s a fun way to run, always having someone just ahead or just behind to keep you pushing yourself a little more than you would have done on your own.

Then at the end you catch your breath, mill about and drift off home, or clap others in and talk to your neighbours and fellow runners, people with whom you might otherwise have merely exchanged glances as you passed on the pavement. Now, in the nicest possible way, you can plot their downfall next weekend.

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