I learned about parkrun through Instagram.

It seems to be very popular in Europe - England, in particular. It’s a free fun run every weekend in the same place and you have a barcode that you scan and it tracks your time and the amount of times you’ve run and where you’ve run them and it’s a nice little running community and back then I looked up to see if there were any around here and I was disappointed to find out there were not.

When I looked I think the closest one was in New Jersey or something.

It seems like a couple of local-ish ones have started since then…I should have checked more often. It has gotten more popular in the United States in the past few years.

But in last April or May I met someone at one of the Couch to 5K trainings who was trying to start one here in Framingham, and it began in September.

I think it’s been doing pretty well, but unfortunately for me there has always been something else going on in that time that has kept me from checking it out - the Chicago Marathon or the Boston Half was responsible for a good chunk of September through November for me - but now I have the open calendar and on Saturday I volunteered there for the first time.

It was a small turnout on Saturday - a little rainier than I think anyone was expecting. (The forecast called for rain only overnight, but the wet weather stuck around until almost noon.) But there was a turnout, and a bunch of volunteers, and we made it happen.

I kind of love it - they also keep stats on volunteering or running, so you know that’s right up my alley.

I think I'll go again next week, since we have nothing going on Saturday mornings.

Eventually I’ll run this myself but I’m not itching for a 5K at the moment. I’m content to help keep the event running smoothly for others, and I’ll have my time soon enough.

If the Turkey Trot goes well maybe I can even convince my daughter to join me for a few Saturday morning runs in the future.