What can we learn about nature, physical activity, and health from parkrun?

Building on the existing multidisciplinary scholarship with a shared interest in physical activity, health, and therapeutic landscapes, this chapter takes seriously the ways in which our new understandings play out in the “real-world.” By taking the 5-km running initiative, parkrun, as a case in point we outline multiple processes that serve to explain how parkrun manifests as a health-enhancing activity at the intersection of nature, physical activity and wellbeing. Following a description of the key characteristics of parkrun and providing an overview of the published research about it, we illustrate how (i) parkrun enables access to affective “Green Space,” (ii) parkrun provides an affective and sensory experience, and (iii) parkrun fosters affective communities. These processes are impactful, we argue, largely in the context of contemporary lifestyles whereby social and multisensory experiences in nature are increasingly supplanted by sedentary and occularcentric ways of being within urban landscapes and postmodern temporalities. Importantly, we also suggest that the positive public health potential of initiatives like parkrun are likely to emerge not simply from nature alone but through a combination of multiple affective processes taking place in the context of nature.