Introducing a friend to parkrun

This weekend we had my brother and sister-in-law with us and even though I knew I couldn't yet risk a run myself due to the on-going injury problems, I still managed to convince my brother-in-law to make his parkrun debut.

I have certainly mentioned parkrun to him a number of times over the last year and a half that I have been taking part at Coventry parkrun. I must have been pretty convincing when recommending that he give it a go "one day" as he turned up with trainers and jogging bottoms and raring to go.

I have to admit that I have bombarded most of my family and friends over the last 18 months, almost giving them no chance to say "no", by saying "you must come on Friday so that you can join me at parkrun on the Saturday morning". Perhaps that is why they all come on Saturday's! My brother-in-law is not the first friend that I have managed to drag along having succeeded once before (not that either needed dragging really), and I certainly hope they will not be the last. Other friends out there beware the "you should come on Friday night" trick!

Yet another one of the great things about parkrun is getting to share it with someone for their first time. Its pretty clear (from the fact that my blog is dedicated to it) that parkrun is very important to me, and like a child, or anything you are proud of, it feel great to show it off to your friends and family.

I believe its hard not to be impressed with parkrun when you see it in action for the first time so interests me to see what my friends think of it. With this blog now back in full swing I therefore decided that it would be a good idea to come up with a few questions for my brother-in-law to record what he expected, and then how he found parkrun to be after his first run. I hope to be able to share his thoughts and comments in this blog within the next couple of days.

For me, I just feel happy to have been able to share the wonder of parkrun with another one of my friends. I will now try to work on my next lucky friend (victim!).