Parkrunners have plenty of choice with three courses now within Portsmouth - and why launch of Great Salterns event faced a near two-year delay

Initially anticipated to be open to runners in early 2020, the new Great Salterns course has just played host to its second staging.

Event director Kev Budd and Brett Rumfitt had put their idea for another parkrun event in the city into action in August 2019, with numbers attending the Southsea 5k course rapidly rising.

So with everything rubber-stamped Great Salterns, which has a start and finish point at Hilsea Cricket Club pavilion on Tangier Road, was primed to begin just as parkrun was brought to an abrupt halt across the UK because of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

At that point event director Budd, who spent seven years as run director at the nearby Southsea event before mapping out Portsmouth’s newest parkrun course, surely could not have envisaged the near two-year wait that he would face to finally get Great Salterns going.

But after a great deal of patience and plenty of hard work, the city's brand new parkrun saw 238 finishers on official launch day on January 22, while there were 163 participants who completed the course this past weekend.

‘We’ve had brilliant feedback, we’ve had no complaints from the residents, it’s just gone really well,’ revealed Great Salterns event director Budd.

‘The city have got three parkruns now, which is great, they’re all getting good numbers.

‘The thing about parkrun, it’s totally free, you don’t have to run, you can come and have a walk if you want.

‘I’m biased, I was a run director at Southsea for seven years and I’m now event director here, but it is great. People I call my friends now I’ve only met them through parkrun.

‘We just want to push on, get well established, I don’t think we’re ever going to beat Southsea in terms of numbers, but when anyone wants a change (they’re welcome). We just want to be something a bit different and just go from there, really.’

As Great Salterns slowly starts to get on its feet, the other two parkruns in the city welcomed high numbers last weekend.

The Southsea seafront course has seen rising figures since the turn of the year, with 445 finishers in their latest event.

While the other city parkrun, Portsmouth Lakeside, had 258 runners complete the course this past weekend - their highest figure since February 15, 2020 (355).

In total, that tallied up to a total of 866 finishers involved in parkrun events across the city last weekend and the hope will be the numbers keep turning out with three different course to chose from within Portsmouth.