THE OCTOGENARIAN PARKRUNNERS – Runner’s World, Dec 2025 issue

It’s not a complaint you hear often: ‘There are too many octogenarians at the parkrun!’ But it’s an issue faced at the 5 July edition in Bushy Park, west London, where 117 over-80s have gathered for the annual get-together of Britain’s most senior parkrunners, and the organisers have only made 100 cupcakes.

At least there is plenty of prosecco, so as long as you’re not too hungry, this turnout is a great sign for a segment of the population that is staying physically active longer than ever. When George Frogley and Richard Pitcairn-Knowles first thought to bring the octogenarians and nonogenarians together at parkrun in 2016, 15 runners showed up. Last year there were 72. According to Sport England’s latest Active Lives survey the percentage of over-75s meeting NHS exercise guidelines of at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week is now 42.8%, a rise of almost 10% since the organisation first began gathering data in 2016.

Many of the over-80s here are doing much more than that, as evidenced by some remarkable 5k times and a few life stories that involve medals at international athletics competitions and masters-level records. Today they’re running within Bushy Park’s main event, which is the home of the original parkrun, and thus a whopper. Over 1,660 runners and walkers raise great clouds of dust on the parched summer trails of Henry VIII’s deer hunting grounds. Among the over-80s, Peter Giles of Hercules Wimbledon AC takes overall victory in a scorching 24:17, while Doreen Abbott of Zero to Hero Runners is first woman home in 32:04. Further back there are even two mighty men in the 95-99 age category: Derek Wright and Dermot Lynch. Both finish in under an hour.

I go along to meet some of the runners and share their stories. When they find out who I work for, I get kettled by people complaining that the font size in this magazine is too small. Otherwise it’s a joyful, rousing day, with lots of memories shared and some great advice for us whippersnappers who would love to be able to keep moving as long as this. The legs may slow down but the runner’s high doesn’t seem to fade.

Colin Lea, who took over arranging the event from Richard and George this year after they hit their nineties, was thrilled that such a crowd came along. ‘It’s wonderful to be there with so many older people. It gives you a feeling of what you can do,’ he says. Top of his and his wife’s to-do list for next year: bake even more cakes.

COLIN LEA

Finish time: 41:14

Although he is now the organiser of the octogenarians parkrun, for most of his life Colin Lea was a watcher, not a doer. A lifelong athletics fan and spectator, the former research scientist remembers going to the end of his road in Stanmore, north London, to watch the 1948 Olympic marathon runners racing past. He also visited the stadium at White City many times as a boy, cheering on the likes of Chris Chataway, Gordon Pirie and Roger Bannister. ‘I’ve never watched a football match or a cricket match, but got hooked on athletics early on,’ he says.

More recently, as an older dad, he found himself dropping kids off at school in Teddington alongside fellow father Mo Farah. In the spring of 2012 he was able to wish Farah luck personally, knowing he and his son William had managed to secure tickets for the Olympic Stadium on 4 August – the day that would go down in history as ‘Super Saturday’. They watched Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Farah all take gold medals. ‘To be sitting there on that night, in that atmosphere, was something special,’ he says. ‘The noise was like nothing I have ever experienced.’

Even after such inspirational scenes, it still took Colin until his 75th birthday to toe the line at his first parkrun. Before then he had been taking William, who ran for his school at cross country, along to Bushy Park, but initially only volunteered as a marshall. Now he’s finally hooked, approaching his 250th parkrun at the time of writing and taking on bigger challenges too. Twice since the pandemic he has completed the virtual London Marathon, getting up in the dark to run six times around Bushy Park and be home for lunch.

Why does he think some people can keep going over 80? Is it genetic good luck or something else? ‘It’s just obstinacy, I suppose,’ he says. ‘You have to be able to keep getting up early on a Saturday morning even when it’s freezing cold or raining. As long as you don’t opt out, it becomes a habit. You have to do it.’

ELAINE STATHAM

Finish time: 32:20

‘I used to think running was odd,’ says Elaine Statham from Stoke-on-Trent. ‘We sometimes saw some ladies run past our house and when I found out they’d come from about three miles away I thought, “That’s a long way.”’

A keen squash player in her youth, she’s made up for lost time since. Elaine entered her first race in 1983, age 39, not realising that even though it was called a ‘Fun Run’ it was actually a half marathon. It’s fair to say she discovered a bit of a knack. Two years later she ran the Bedford marathon in 2:52:16. After we speak, she and her husband Mick send me a long document detailing her running accomplishments, which include 10 sub-3-hour marathons, nine world records and nine British records in Masters age categories, set between the ages of 45 and 60.

Once Elaine decided to swap marathon running for the track, she travelled the world competing. In 1989 she won 10,000m gold and set a W45 world record at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon. In 1991, when the World Championships were held in Turku, Finland, she won the 5,000m, the 10,000m and the cross country, setting new world records in both of the track events.

The running had to pause in 1998 when she suffered a stress fracture, but she switched to cycling, even with her foot in plaster. Soon afterwards in Calais, Rimini and then Atlanta she took silver, gold and silver respectively in the W55 category of the World Duathlon Championships. She stopped racing competitively in 2003, doing mountain running and long distance walking challenges with Mick for a few years, before being persuaded she could set some parkrun age group records at 75 and beyond. ‘Shame!’ she says, about parkrun’s decision to stop publishing course records.

Does she feel any disappointment that she’s no longer as fast as she was? ‘What keeps me going is moving the goal posts,’ she says. ‘I’ve kept moving from one thing to another. Every five years you can set PBs in a new age category.’

ALBERT YEE

Finish time: 58:41

If you recognise Albert Yee’s surname you might already have guessed that there are athletic genes in his family. His grandson is Alex Yee, the current World and Olympic triathlon champion and this year’s 14th place finisher in the TCS London Marathon. Albert, a regular at Bromley parkrun since 2012, isn’t bothered about reflected glory, however. ‘I claim no credit for my grandchildren’s athletic prowess,’ he says. ‘Their running pedigree is most likely due to my daughter-in-law’s parents, who were very able marathon runners.’

For Alex, the admiration certainly extends in the other direction: ‘He’s a massive inspiration. I’d love to still be running at that age. He’s got such zest for life and it shows the power of running,’ he told the Guardian in April.

Albert’s parents (Alex’s great-grandparents) left China during the revolution and he grew up in Mozambique, leaving for London as an adult to start his own family and become an architect. He didn’t start running until his fifties, encouraged by his son-in-law Martyn, who was a keen marathon runner. ‘My running is mainly for fitness and not competition,’ he says. ‘My running highlight was running parkrun with all my family on my 90th birthday in 2022.’ He loves what he calls ‘the camaraderie of the parkrun family.’

He has a special connection to the octogenarians parkrun, as he designed the medal received by every participant. It is packed with detail including an octagonal shape representing eight decades of life, an image of a runner breaking the finishing tape composed of seven brush strokes, symbolising the seven ages of man, as well as a frog and a tortoise. ‘The frog is a play on the founder George Frogley’s surname,’ Albert explains. ‘Although unremarkable in appearance, it is a creature capable of outstanding feats of agility. The tortoise is a slow animal not associated with running but is wise and sure-footed, and often lives to a great age!’

KATE BOOTH

Finish time: 45:25

The best thing piano teacher Kate Booth saw at the parkrun was a man with ‘COFFIN DODGER’ written on his shirt, but hers was pretty good too. She, her sister Hilary Bradt and their friend Rosamund Reynolds were all sporting T-shirts that say: ‘THE OLD CRONES – WE DO BECAUSE WE CAN.’ It’s a great reappropriation of a word that is invariably negative, and whenever these three meet again – in thunder, lightning , or in rain – there’s fun to be had.

Last year they travelled together to compete in the Nemean Games, a recreation of an ancient Greek sporting event which originally took place in the 6th Century BC and has been revived thanks to architectural excavation of the original stadium. Competitors race barefoot in tunics and winners receive a crown of wild celery leaves. ‘We did the 100 metre, dash, or 100 metre lurch, more accurately,’ Kate explains. ‘There was a field of 11 in our group and we came ninth, tenth and eleventh.’

Even when she isn’t required to dress like Helen of Troy she still enjoys racing. She first did the London Marathon in 1992, did the latest of many Great North Runs last year, and a week after the octogenarians parkrun she did the Saucony London 10k with her son. She likes races with a huge number of entrants because ideally she won’t come last. ‘I don’t want to find myself swept up and not allowed to finish because I’ve exceeded the time limit.’

As regards being able to keep going in her eighties, she concedes it’s good luck to some extent. ‘But I do get increasingly fed up with my age group. A lot of people think they can’t do something when they can. This is what I think should be promoted: you may think you’re not able to, but you are.’

MICHAEL JOHNSON

Finish time: 26:16

Michael Johnson has a problem with ‘youngsters’. The moment they turn 80 these punks show up in his age category and make him look bad. Two years ago, Michael won the octogenarians parkrun. Last year he was second and this year, age 83, he came fourth behind three newly minted 80-year-olds. The year Michael turned 80, in 2022, he would have won this race too, but he was busy in Tampere, Finland, competing in the M80 cross country at the World Masters Athletics Championships.

Michael has been a member of the venerable Wimbledon athletics club Thames Hare & Hounds since his early twenties. In those days they didn’t let women join, but thankfully that has changed. He says he was a ‘pretty mediocre club runner. I would never get in the first team unless someone else dropped out.’ In middle age he did a lot of work abroad and took more of an interest in tennis, but just before his fiftieth birthday he ran in a cross country championship and realised that he would have come fourth in the over 50s if he had been six days older. He began to get more serious about his running.

He still feels competitive these days, but that isn’t his main motivation. ‘I run because I enjoy it, and that’s very important as well. If you really don’t enjoy it, don’t do it,’ he says. ‘I’ve always felt that going for a run is a wonderful way of, sort of, washing your brain. You concentrate on the heels of the person in front of you and all of your worries go away for a time.’

These days he usually runs twice a week, including Rutland Water parkrun, stretching it to three if he has a race coming up. He had a hip replacement 12 years ago and the surgeon told him to stop running. He ignored that. Now he has some arthritis above the waist, which puts paid to golf, but not running.

‘I do know that the wheels will fall off at some stage. What am I going to do then? But then I think: that’s a bit negative. What do I want to do while I’m still running?’

MICK DUPLOCK

Finish time: 43:54

Getting chased by an elephant is one thing. Getting chased by an elephant when you’re blind is another level. Mick Duplock always remembers the date because it was ’02-02-02 – the second of February 2002.’ He was living in Botswana, where he and his wife ran an English language school. ‘I was out for a run with my guide on a quiet road, and suddenly this crashing noise came out of the bush. He grabbed my arm and just said: “Run!” We ran into the bush where there were thorny trees, ant hills, all kinds of things. It got within about 10 feet of us but we did a sharp left turn and the elephant luckily carried straight on. I would have beaten Usain Bolt in a race that day!’

Mick, who is now based in West Sussex where he runs with Horsham Joggers, lived in various African countries as a younger man, where he set up and managed printing companies. In South Africa, where long distance races are everywhere, the first race he ever entered was the Johannesburg Marathon in 1984. He has since completed 54 marathons as well as three finishes at the 55-mile Comrades, the oldest ultramarathon race in the world.

In the 80s he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition that is genetic, and has also affected his mother, his uncles, two cousins and one of his daughters. For many people it bottoms out at ‘tunnel vision’ but for Mick it has been worse than that since about 1996. He can only see ‘all kinds of strange things. Sometimes it’s just white and black. I’ve got a grid that comes up which is all red. Other times I get different colored squares.’

He says the first thing he thought when he was diagnosed was: ‘How can I carry on running?’ He tried getting his wife to drive along slowly while he held the wing mirror of the car, or go ahead with the hazard lights flashing. ‘But she either drove off into the distance and I lost her completely, or she went too slow and I ran straight into the back of the car.’

Now he runs with about seven different regular guide runners, holding a circle of cloth between them. ‘There’s lots of things I can’t do. I miss seeing my environment. But what I can still do is get out and run.’

PAULINE RICH

Finish time: 35:15

Like many runners of her generation, Pauline Rich was inspired to take up the sport after watching the first London Marathon on television in 1981. She took part in the second event, coming through the finish in just under four hours wearing Hi-Tec Silver Shadows.

The laboratory technician at a further education college was 36 at the time, so had already missed her potential running prime, but made up for it with a long period of impressive performances at Masters level, running first for Wimbledon Windmilers and then the central London club Serpentine. She set a marathon PB of 3:08:16 in the W40 category, and ran 19:14 in the 5k as a W45. Coached by her husband Alan, who is a former marathon international for England, she was encouraged to concentrate on 10k races and shorter, and thinks that switch is the reason she has been able to keep going for so long. ‘I think people who start later in life can run for longer,’ she says. ‘People who’ve been running since they were teenagers might wear their bodies out faster. The record holders in the older age groups have usually started late.’

Now based on the south coast and representing Run Academy Worthing, she is newly 80 so this was her first attempt at the octogenarians parkrun. She was third woman and might have been faster if she wasn’t still recovering from a broken leg, sustained two years earlier while doing drills on the track.

Before then she went all over the world for running competitions, including coming second in the W75s at 5,000m and cross country at the World Masters in Finland in 2022, and second in the W70 3,000m at the European Masters in Madrid in 2018. ‘I enjoy the social side of it, and just get a buzz from racing,’ she says. And thanks to the magic maths of age grading, she knows she’s still competitive: ‘If I’m disappointed with my time I look on the Power of 10 website, click on “age graded” and usually think, “That’s not too bad.” It encourages you.’

HUGH BETHELL

Finish time: 29:44

Hugh Bethell has an unusual problem when he competes in the Hampshire Road Race League with the club that he founded, Alton Runners: ‘I win all of my races, but at the same time, I always come last.’ The former doctor is usually the only octogenarian at these events, but if he had his way, that wouldn’t be the case. While working as a cardiac registrar in 1976, he started the Basingstoke & Alton Cardiac Rehabilitation Charity, which has a website where he still maintains a regular blog containing thousands of words extolling the virtues of ‘exercise as medicine’. He has even written a book with the urgent title Get Off the Couch Before It’s Too Late.

As a university student Hugh did a fair amount of running as training for the boxing team, but didn’t really get going with it again until he hit 40. He says he has never been a quick runner, but does it more often than the other sports he enjoys – tennis and golf – still heading out twice a week. In his studies, he looked at levels of physical activity against age and saw ‘a sharp downward turn around 65, 70.’ Through his charity, he recommends exercise programmes to keep people going well beyond that.

Naturally he’s a big fan of parkrun. ‘I can’t speak highly enough about it.’ As we see at this special Bushy Park event, it’s a fantastic way to keep older people moving. He also stresses the amount of money in healthcare it is indirectly saving the taxpayer.

‘I really believe that physical activity is a self-promoting thing,’ he says. ‘People who maintain a high level of physical activity also retain a low level of other conditions that would interfere with that physical activity. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke – they’re all preventable if you’re physically fit. If we got a higher percentage of the population taking exercise in later life, we could empty all the old people’s homes!’