You'd be hard pushed to find a runner who hasn't run a parkrun, so imagine your first outing at one also being the fastest one, ever. That's what happened at the weekend when GB athlete Andy Butchart toed the start line of Silverknowes parkrun in Edinburgh.
Butchart, 31, finished in a time of 13 minutes 45 seconds, beating the previous best of 13 minutes 48 seconds, set in 2012 by another Olympian, Andy Baddeley in Bushy Park, London.
Talking to Runner's World, Butchart explained how this impromptu world record came about, "So, to be honest, I've never done a parkrun before - it's never really been something that's been on my radar. But one of the boys that I run with a lot, he knew that I didn't have any race plans coming up for the next month or so, so he was like, why don't you just go out and do a parkrun and then just try and get the world record, it'll be nuts! Just go and do it!
I’ve been saying to him, honestly, I'm really not that bothered, I'll just leave it. But he said just do it, please, please! So I said, fine. I'll go out and have a go this weekend. So it was pretty impromptu, but at the same time, he did put it in my head like a month ago.
I only told my coach a couple days before because I didn't want him to be like nah, you're not doing that!
But it was it was brilliant. On the day like few of the boys came down, and did a few kms with me to help me to get out and try and hit the record, hit the time. So it was fun. It was a good day out and it was a really the enjoyable experience - Like I said, I've never been to a parkrun and so I didn't know what to expect. So it was a fun morning, that's for sure!
Of course with your watch you have a rough idea of pace, but there were no markers or anything, so no concept of whether or not I was up or down on time - just me, vs the parkrun clock, if that makes sense! So that was a bit different too."
parkrun takes place every Saturday and you can find one local to you, here.
