by Blake Herzog, photos courtesy of Jan Alfano trail Parkrun
On the same Saturday in early 2020, Molly Auman and Fiona Reid of Prescott found themselves taking part in a global recreation movement on opposite sides of the world.
Reid was visiting family in her native South Africa when she ran in a weekly event called a parkrun that uses a simple premise in a network reaching 22 countries; hold a 5K run/walk event using open space every Saturday regardless of the weather or other conditions and allow entrants to track their personal times.
Reid says the course that day was on
a farm that was extremely muddy from recent rain, but “I just thought ‘Oh my gosh, this is so much fun.’ You get to meet everybody, you run in fantastic locations, and South Africans are nuts about parkrun. Out of all the other places in the world, South Africa has really, really hooked onto the idea of this 5K, every Saturday, no matter what.”
It hasn’t caught on in the same way in the U.S., but Auman also took part in a parkrun in Tucson, and once the friends got together they agreed Prescott needed a parkrun of its own. Then the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down globally for a couple of years, and it wasn’t until June 2024 when they were able to launch the Jan Alfano Trail parkrun, held 7:30 a.m. each Saturday, beginning at the trailhead near Willow Creek Dog Park.
Ever since, the parkrun has gained its footing within the Greater Prescott running community and is now consistently drawing 20 to 30 participants per week, rain or shine. Reid says the weather gods have been generous to them from the outset, with just a few minutes of rain one morning.
The event is free and participants only need to register for it once through
www.parkrun.us/janalfanotrail or the national website at www.parkrun.us/register. After they do, they receive a personalized scannable barcode to bring every time they attend. Their finish time will be linked to their name and displayed with the final results from the week.
Anyone can run, walk or do both over the 5-kilometer (3.1 mile) course, which follows a trail running east/west along Willow Creek Road, turning around north of Britni Drive. One dog on a leash per walker or runner is permitted. Participants are strongly encouraged to register and use a barcode even if they’re not tracking their time so the organizers can have an emergency contact if anything should happen during the run.
Regulars range in age from 10 to 87, and most love to socialize. Everyone is encouraged to gather at Method Coffee afterward.
Auman says the camaraderie keeps people coming back, “and sometimes it’s hard for us to get out of there, because they want to sit around and visit. I’m not complaining, it’s wonderful.”
Every Saturday morning either Auman or Reid acts as the event director, pulling parkrun signs and other equipment out of a small shed at nearby Findlay Subaru. A total of seven volunteers is required every week to move forward. They have never failed to pull it off, though it can take some begging and pleading to make it happen.
The most frequent volunteer Mike Gulley is “our biggest ambassador. He goes all over talking about parkrun and how wonderful it is and we’re so grateful,” Auman says.
Besides the generally mild Prescott weather, the scenery has been a huge draw, Auman says.
“People come from, especially from out of the country and say this is one of the best parkruns they’ve ever done because it’s so beautiful. You get to see the lake and you kind of touch on the Granite Dells, and it really is beautiful.”
The weekly event does get a fair number of international visitors, many of them coming for a surprising reason; parkrun enthusiasts around the world set various challenges for themselves, and a common one is resolving to participate in one run that begins with each letter of the alphabet.
“Ours is the Jan Alfano Trail parkrun, and there aren’t too many Js out there in the world,” Reid says. “So, we get a ton of people here who want to ‘cross off the J’ for the parkrun. We get people from all over the world, particularly the UK, Australia, South Africa and from other parts of the country. They take vacations specifically around where parkruns are being held. It might just be for a short time and they’re gone, but there’s been an exchange of something like magic.”
One of these out-of-town visitors may be the most famous parkrunner Prescott has ever seen, a man who used one prosthetic running leg and registered under the name “Juan Leg.” His resilience has won him some coverage over the last decade for being the only person to show up to a snowed-in parkrun and running a half-marathon in Illinois in less than two hours.
He turned into the Prescott parkrun’s second-biggest cheerleader, Reid says. “He ran it. … and he was just incredibly positive.”
The only other two parkruns in Arizona are both in Tucson, and there’s just three in California. But the concept is slowly spreading though the U.S., which now has almost 100 active ones. Reid says the global nature of the movement, and the eccentricities it includes, is one of the most compelling parts of it.
“I know when I get out there for Saturday parkrun, and this is an all-volunteer run event, I know around the world, this very same Saturday, thousands of people are getting outside, meeting their community, having fun and getting 5Ks worth of exercise whether it’s walk, run, push your grandchildren, run with a donkey — we’ve had donkeys come to ours.”
