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The spirit of parkrun is coming to the world of cycling through ParkRide, a new initiative that began in June in Scotland.
The event was created by Kerry MacPhee, a former professional mountain bike rider, and it uses some of the trails around Aberfoyle, or Gravelfoyle as it has become known.
Instead of running 5km around a local park on a Saturday morning, as happens in parkrun, ParkRide sees riders of all ages tackle a regular 10km or 20km loop around the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, to the north of Scotland.
The cyclists are timed each time they ride the ParkRide, which is happening once a month over the winter. Results are emailed to participants, allowing them to track and aim to better their times, as in parkrun.
The running sensation, which began at Bushy Park in 2004, sees hundreds of thousands of people running every weekend at 2,000 locations in 22 countries around the world.
From small beginnings, MacPhee hopes that people will pick up the cycling bug, although there are more hoops in the way of the two-wheeled event – riders have to sign up beforehand, and there are supervisors riding around to offer mechanical assistance.
Keen to encourage families to partake, parents are able to drop off their children at “Bairns on Bikes”, skills sessions designed for those aged five to 12, and kids in trailers or riding on Shotgun style seats are also welcome.
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“We were thinking about what can we do to engage people who aren’t willing to join in our big gravel events, and get them into cycling,” MacPhee told Cycling Weekly last week. “I like cycling with my friends who are parents, but it’s not always easy for them to ride. The parkrun model works, it’s great. We have ready-made way-marked trails here, so why not. It’s as simple as that.
“I basically ripped off parkrun, and I wanted to go riding with my friends who are parents. We just wanted to get rid of barriers to cycling. So put in a 10km or 20km loop, and they ride with a supervisor just in case anything happens.”
She applied to Stirling Council for a community grant, which allowed her to run a six-week pilot over this summer, which was successful. Participants of all ages have joined in, with the youngest solo rider four, with people coming up from Glasgow and Edinburgh to take part.
“We asked people to sign up beforehand, mainly for insurance purposes,” MacPhee explained. “Parkrun can happen anywhere, but cycling is very different. We’re very fortunate here, it’s quite rural and we have way-marked trails. We’re not encroaching on other users, either. We don’t encounter walkers or dogs. It can be run more widely, but not as easily as parkrun. I would love to see other people get stuck in. It is a lot more challenging, we have to make sure that the public liability stuff is strong enough.
“We’ve had a six-week pilot, and now we’re going to start running it on the last Sunday of every month. There are less volunteers, because it’s quite rural, so we’re going to do it once a month now and then next summer we might run another six-week series again.”
If you’re in the Lomond area and interested, you can read more about the ParkRide here. If you want to build your own version, MacPhee is keen to help. “We need enthusiastic people to make this happen,” she said.
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