Coronavirus: Parkrunners given chance to come together as usual on Saturday via online quiz

In a bid to stop people gathering together as usual for ‘freedom’ runs, parkrun rolled out a quiz, hosted on YouTube by radio presenter and parkrun regular Vassos Alexander

Saturday-morning parkrunners were given the chance to come together as usual at 9am via an online quiz.

Parkrun has become a global phenomenon since its launch in 2004, with 715 different locations across the UK staging the weekly events and more than two million runners taking part.

However, all those 5k runners, joggers and walkers were stopped in their tracks this week when all parkruns were ordered to close due to the coronavirus outbreak.

And, in a bid to stop people gathering together as usual for ‘freedom’ runs, parkrun rolled out a quiz, hosted on YouTube by radio presenter and parkrun regular Vassos Alexander.

Runners were posed 15 questions on parkrun’s website, with each round representing one mile of the regular Saturday race.

Questions ranged from the most common parkrun surname – Smith – to the average finish time in South Africa, with scores tallied up and a notional leaderboard read out.

Parkrun chief executive Nick Pearson pleaded with runners to not congregate on Saturday morning.

“Worrying times for everyone,” he said. “We all know it’s important to do everything we can, but we saw people calling for groups to gather and run unofficial parkruns. Please, please, please don’t do this,” he said.