Where did I find the courage to talk to my mum about her cancer? At parkrun, far behind the racers
TThe apology happened about 3km in our local area parkrun. I didn’t expect it and certainly didn’t plan it. But as crows circled overhead and a faint autumn sun poked its way through the changing leaves, I felt the words I hadn’t been able to find for months bubbling up inside me: “Mommy, I’m sorry I can’t make it this month.” you’ve been. summer.”
I have no doubt that this expression of regret, quietly uttered in a field in the center of Cambridge, would have gone unsaid if we had not walked together that morning. From an early age I have had the best conversations with my mother during walks. Maybe it’s the freshness of the air, maybe it’s because a conversation conducted side by side can be less intimidating and more fruitful than one while awkwardly keeping an eye on each other. Whatever it is, on that day, on that walk, six months after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and ten days after she was officially cleared, we talked like we hadn’t talked in months.
Parkrun – a free 5km community run that takes place every Saturday – has always had a special appeal. But the ability to stimulate conversation is, I suspect, the beauty of the event’s newest initiative: Parkwalk. In the 19 years since its inception at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, parkrun has grown enormously, with events taking place in 800 locations across Britain – and around the world, from the US to South Africa and Australia. Recently, the phenomenon has also moved to embracing walkers. In 2017, the volunteer role of ‘tail runner’ – which is there to follow up, so that no one finishes last – was renamed ‘tail runner’, a nod to the fact that more people were walking than ever. An additional ‘parkwalker’ role was then introduced in 2022 to make the event, which already prides itself on inclusivity, even more appealing. The parkwalker is not so much a marshal as a friendly face offering encouragement. Since last year, 36,000 people have volunteered to be parkwalkers and there have been more than 1 million parkwalks worldwide.
People run for all kinds of reasons – injury, illness, age, recovery – and, I discovered when I joined them with my mother, they get more out of the activity than a gently elevated heart rate. Most weekends, communities of walkers gather at the end of the run to talk to each other about their weeks and share their trials and triumphs.
Krishnaa Mahbubani is one such walker. A former parkrunner and powerlifter – she competed in the Commonwealth Games in 2019 – Mahbubani, 43, took up parkwalking after a serious knee injury she suffered while coaching rugby during the Covid pandemic. “I used to come to parkrun on my crutches,” she says as we walk the Coldham’s Common course in Cambridge. Mahbubani initially returned as a tail walker, but by the time she had undergone surgery and recovered, the parkwalk itself had been constructed. “It gave me structure and routine and, without realizing it, a community of like-minded people working to make a change.” For her, talking is, in addition to walking, a major part of her walks. “I always come armed with my headphones,” she says. “I’ve never used them.”
Mary Twitchett, 63, helps run a community initiative called 5k Your Way, which encourages people living with and after cancer – as well as their families, friends and those working in cancer care – to take part in a local parkrun. She agrees with Mahbubani: “When you’re in nature and when you walk, it’s freedom without barriers,” she explains at Coldham’s Common, where she and her team set up camp on the last Saturday of every month. “The last time we were here one of my friends came. She is undergoing chemotherapy and this lady just walked with her. She had never met her. She was a lady who had lymphoid cancer and she hadn’t talked to anyone about it and was going through the treatment all alone. She talked about it the whole walk.” Twitchett, an elite athlete who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 just weeks after running the Los Angeles Marathon, knows well the shadow a cancer diagnosis can cast. Three years after her original diagnosis, she had a recurrence. “I had to experience it all again,” she says. Two years later, she is doing well, but the ghost never goes away. “We walk with it every day,” she says.
Running her own race is Sarah Catchpole, 56, a former rower and marathoner who suffered a stroke last year. “It affected my whole right side,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month.” These days, Catchpole runs with a new foot brace and says one of her main physio goals is to take part in a parkrun. Every now and then she starts jogging a few steps, each step a small but purposeful challenge. She is competitive by nature and hates being last. That’s why a community of walkers makes all the difference. “I don’t like people waiting. But here, when there are a lot of walkers, it’s nice because you’re not the only one.” Later I turn around and see Catchpole and Mahbubani, who have never met before, walking – and talking – together.
Just ahead are Terry and Liz Smith, aged 79 and 72. The couple are from South Africa, where they regularly walk in the park and visit their daughter in Cambridge. “We’ve always walked – that keeps us sane,” says Liz, as they walk away together with an impressive licking motion.
It’s no wonder that parkwalk, like parkrun, has gone global. Melanie Young, 50, from Bristol, who has hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, has parkwalked at 33 events and walked at 32 others in several European countries, as well as Malaysia and Singapore. She has just returned from tail running during the first parkrun in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. “I find it lowers some barriers,” she says. “You already have the common ground of parkrun, so an opener of: ‘Is this your home parkrun?’ or ‘Have you run or run this parkrun before?’, while they are closed questions, they actually invite a lot of information if the person wants to talk.”
The following weekend – at Wimpole Estate parkrun, south-west of Cambridge – I meet Amelia and Alistair Taylor, a father and daughter completing their first parkwalk. “I’ve never been good at running,” says Amelia, 16, who explains that the opportunity to walk has made the event more accessible for her. Alistair agrees, adding that busy lives mean it’s hard to find the time (or energy) to talk properly. “It’s good to have some time to be in each other’s company and talk.” When I catch up with them at the end – they sprint across the finish line hand in hand – they say they’ll be back next week.
Behind the Taylors, Alex Norton, 43, and her daughter Katie, 10, happily jump together in the sunshine, Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth blasting out of an iPhone. They are Wimpole’s designated parkwalkers this weekend and proudly wear the blue vests to prove it. Watching them sing, dance and chat about the 5k reminds me of walking with my mother growing up.
Her cancer diagnosis in February came as a shock. She had surgery in March and started chemotherapy in April. Friends and family gathered, formed book clubs, and sent gifts and thoughtful messages. But I carried on as normal: caring for my toddler, writing, teaching, dropping by to see her as often as life allowed. I was just busy, I told myself, refusing to face the fact that, busy or not, things were far from normal.
But just as other walkers have found the parkwalk an opportunity to open up in ways they haven’t before, so do we. As we walk, I am able to put my conflicting emotions into words and my mother has the time and space to properly tell me about her experience. “Cancer can be very lonely. A lot of thoughts go through your head, especially in the dark of night. So being in the daylight and the normality of being with other people who are in different situations – they don’t all have the same health problems as you – is really nice,” she says.
We turn the last corner. My mother went through chemotherapy to stay fit. Marking her completely safe with our own walk together feels festive. She beams at me. “I feel free again.”
The sun breaks through the clouds as we finish and endorphins flow through our veins, stimulated, I’m sure, by both conversation and exercise. Before we cross the finish line, we make an agreement: once a month we will go for a walk together. We grab our finish tokens, hug each other and my toddler who excitedly runs towards us in the finish chute.
And so two new park walkers – park talkers, actually – were born.