Tom Bond

It's hard to overstate how important running has become in my life. Like a lot of people, I fell in and out of fitness for years until I found my thing. For me, it started with group workouts in Victoria Park — the mix of fresh air, hard effort, and the accountability of a group finally made it stick.

From there I found parkrun, and it wasn't long before I started to think of myself as a runner. What struck me about parkrun was how it catered to everyone in the same event at once. On any given Saturday you've got people racing flat out for a PB, people chatting the whole way round, people coming back from injury or illness, and people running for the very first time — all counted the same.

That feeling deepened when I joined J and M, a running club full of friendly, supportive people that helped me stay consistent and push me on. The benefits to my physical and mental health have been enormous, and I've met runners along the way who've achieved extraordinary things and inspired me more than they know.

RunFest is our attempt to bottle all of that over a weekend. The programme combines fun, fitness, inspiration, learning, music, and friends, with mental health and wellbeing at its heart, and it gives everyone a chance to try something new and learn how to progress, no matter their goals.

This is our second year. The event is run entirely by volunteers. Every ticket goes back into the event and the causes behind it. It's a proper community effort, and we'd love you to be part of it.