Leeds Samaritans are ran every Saturday pre-Covid restrictions at Parkruns across the city to raise awareness among the public about Samaritans' work.
Parkrun is a collection of 5-kilometre running events that take place every Saturday morning at various parks around the world (22 countries and counting)! The events welcome people of all abilities to take part - from those taking their first steps in running to experienced runners who want to run with the community.
At Leeds branch, we decided to form a group of runners to take part the Parkrun - it's something we can enjoy together (and keep us fit!) and it's a good opportunity to meet members of the public and raise awareness about Samaritans. We also felt that being active and outdoors links well with general mental health and wellbeing, which is important to us all. This all took place pre-Covid restrictions and it was delightful to meet so many people at the events.
We kick-started our first Leeds Parkrun on a cold January morning at Armley Park. Leeds volunteer Graham was behind the Parkrun initiative and said a few words about the charity before the running commenced. We were pleased to receive a very heartwarming and welcoming reception from both the Parkrun volunteers and the other runners at Armley Park that morning.
Blowing the cobwebs away in our Samaritans vests was a great way to start the weekend. We are planning to tour all of the Parkruns in Leeds - about once a month as a group but hopefully we will manage more than that individually in between! The next run on our list is Bramley Park and we hope it will be another great success.
We hope to be able to continue this when we are next able to. We will be posting information on our Twitter feed for for which runs we will be taking part in and when we're able to, once restrictions have been lifted.
Leeds Samaritans getting ready to tackle our first run at Armley Park