It's the announcement almost 3.5 million registered parkrunners and the 300,000 regular active participants in nearly 600 parkruns in England have waited 16 months to hear. The return of most parkruns in England will take place this Saturday 24 July and this writer has already volunteered to marshal his local event!

Helen Hood, Head of Event Delivery for parkrun gave the news in an email to all participants and it was possibly one of the most joyous messages to pop in the inbox for a long time.

Not all parkruns will return this weekend as some permissions are still tangled up in red tape despite England's Step 4 status in the progress of the pandemic. Sadly, a few venues have been lost and not been replaced but the vast majority of the 5K events will reopen this weekend.

As Helen Hood says: "Please do note that a small number of events are cancelled for various reasons and some events do not have permission to return yet, so we strongly recommend checking your local parkrun event page and/or their associated social media prior to making plans or travelling". 

All parkrun events are required to follow a Covid framework developed in collaboration with Sport England and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and this framework will continue to be in place in all locations for the foreseeable future. 

As part of that framework, parkrun has published two simple COVID-19 Codes. The 10-point guide for runners and walkers is here and the bespoke code for volunteers is here

Volunteers are essential for the safe delivery of parkruns in normal times and have never been more needed than right now. If you can spare an hour or two on a Saturday morning to help others enjoy their happy and healthy activity you can sign up for volunteer emails here

It is expected to be busy for a few weeks as parkrun gets back into its stride and some will prefer to volunteer while others are chomping at the bit to get back to running with their friends and the wider parkrun community.

So that's it. Set the alarm. Dig out that barcode or volunteer T-shirt and hi-viz. Saturday mornings are about to go back to the old routine. 

Bring it on!

Find your local parkrun here

Image: Courtesy parkrun Marketing