Dewsbury Junior Parkrun aiming to boost numbers after reaching 400 milestone

Sunday’s race was the 400th junior event to take place at Crow Nest Park since the parkrun series began on June 14, 2015.

The junior parkrun is a free, fun, friendly, community event organised by volunteers for children aged four to 14 taking place at Crow Nest every week.

It is a great introduction for all the family to be physically active outside together.

Children can walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate while parents often participate too and either complete the course with their youngsters or help out.

“Our junior events offer an opportunity for the whole community to come together and get involved,” said event director Michael Hartley.

"Since we started we have had 1,293 different children take part and a total number of finishers across of 11,377.

“Our attendance pre-pandemic was quite healthy at around 40-60 children each week. Unfortunately, since we have returned post-Covid our numbers have been much lower.

"Despite our efforts to advertise and encourage children to return we have had a much lower turnout (typically less than 20 and often in single figures).

"We rely on volunteers and as a minimum we need 12 adults to help out each week to safely deliver the event. We have equally struggled with volunteer numbers since the pandemic.

“But reaching the milestone of 400 events is a significant event for us and we are very excited about it.

"We made our 400th event a celebration and used it to try to raise awareness in the community and hopefully get back to the levels of participation we had previously.

"We want to encourage people to walk, jog, or run and volunteer together – junior parkrun is for everyone.”

The junior parkruns start at 9am every Sunday and they are usually finished by 9.30am.

Taking part is easy and completely free. To enter children for the event, simply register on the parkrun website (https://www.parkrun.org.uk/dewsbury-juniors/).