STORMS RIVER VILLAGE NEWS - Bruce Fordyce celebrated his 575th parkrun at the launch of the Storms River Village parkrun on Saturday 24 May.

This latest parkrun, which takes you through the Plaatbos Nature Reserve, is the 227th venue for the community event in South Africa.

The legendary Fordyce has run the Comrades Marathon 30 times, won it nine times - and broken the record five times.

Fordyce, the president of parkrun South Africa, said the parkrun is a community event that involves everyone - it is free for those who want to run or walk 5km on a Saturday.

Community

The first parkrun was initiated in London in 2004 by Fordyce's friend, Paul Sinton-Hewitt. 

It has since grown to involve 10 million people running at 2 600 events worldwide and there are 450 000 people doing the parkrun worldwide every Saturday.

Fordyce told the 81 participants at the launch that, in essence, parkrun is a community. "New Zealand started earlier today, followed by Australia… and then South Africa. Two hours later it will be Europe's chance - and then followed by Canada and the USA," he said.

Fordyce, who had a knee replacement not too long ago, came 31st on Saturday, finishing in a time of 38:04.

He stressed that parkrun is not only for runners and walkers, but for volunteers as well: he was wearing a blue "500" participant T-shirt, and his wife Jill a black "100" volunteer T-shirt.

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