College Park’s Weekly Parkrun Plumps Up on Thanksgiving

Frank and Larry are running late. It’s their shared birthday, and the scores of people gathered on the Paint Branch Trail in College Park are waiting to serenade them. Meanwhile, a trio of tweenaged boys erupts in laughter when one realizes he’s wearing two similar but undeniably different shoes. 

Footwear foibles aside, it’s a typical Saturday for devotees of College Park’s parkrun, where camaraderie has helped turn this offshoot of an international movement into the biggest of its kind in North America.

Now the group, whose volunteer organizers include University of Maryland faculty members Andrea Zukowski and Colin Phillips, is preparing for its most popular annual event, on Thanksgiving morning, when as many as 500 runners and walkers get their Turkey Day off to an active start. 

“College Park parkrun has the friendly vibe of a Turkey Trot every single Saturday, but our actual Turkey Trot is definitely our biggest day of the year,” said Phillips, a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher of linguistics. “We love the buzz from all the extra folks who join us to start off their holiday."

Born in the United Kingdom in 2004 and now operating in 22 countries, parkrun is a free 5K that takes place at the same time, on the same course, every week. Phillips and his wife, Zukowski, discovered the parkrun phenomenon while visiting his brother in the U.K., where he was a regular participant. 

Zukowski, a research scientist in linguistics who’d previously been “sedentary my whole life,” had discovered a love for running just a few years earlier, when she took up the hobby after dropping her daughter off for the school bus at 7 a.m. and had free time before the workday started. “What I learned from running is that you practice, and you get better,” she said. She wanted to give others a chance at the same revelation. 

She and Phillips soft-launched the College Park iteration of parkrun in early 2016, spreading the word on social media and among their networks that they were creating what they hoped would be a new community hub. At first, roughly a dozen people regularly turned out on Saturday mornings at the Paint Branch Trail, but when the group officially launched in October of that year, some 65 people showed up.

Since then, College Park parkrun has steadily grown, thanks in large part to the fact that it’s not just a group for hardcore runners. Many walk the course, some push baby strollers, others jog with their canine companions. “If you’re a healthy parkrun, and if you’re serving the real purpose of a parkrun, you should be pulling in everybody,” said Zukowski. “The trick is not to let the running contingent of your parkrun become the general impression.” 

Today, some 200 show up at the starting point every Saturday at 9 a.m. Many stick around afterward for coffee and brunch at Board and Brew. 

“Maybe the second or third time I went, people already started knowing my name,” said Emily Isaacson ’25, who started going to parkrun as a freshman. “Everybody there is so nice—it was really great to have a community outside of school.” 

The parkrun community is so vibrant that James Stillwell, associate clinical professor in the School of Public Policy and faculty director of the Do Good Campus at the Do Good Institute, used the group as a case study for a class he taught in Spring 2025 called Building Community: Showing Up for Social Change. “I wanted an example of a community that the students could contribute to but also learn from what a strong community in action looks like,” Stillwell said. 

Larry Washington, professor of mathematics, said that parkrun keeps him connected both to his half-century-long running practice and his friends. “The camaraderie is more than in other places,” he said. “Right now, there’s a bunch of other 70-year-olds—we hang around together and talk about baseball from the 1960s after the race.”