Parys parkrun, one of 126 parkrun locations in South Africa, has been in Parys for three years. Every Saturday morning at 08h00, eager parkrunners enjoy walking and running the five-kilometre route along the Vaal River. Parys parkrun starts from Mimosa, passes through Egweni and continues along the track next to Grewar Avenue.

In addition to their regular Saturday morning parkruns, Parys parkrun will also host parkruns on Christmas Day (08h00 on Monday, 25 December 2017) and New Year’s Day (09h00 on Monday, 1 January 2018).

For New Year’s Day, parkrunners can enjoy a ‘parkrun Double’. Parys parkrun has partnered with the parkruns in Potchefstroom and Meyerton. Both Potch and Meyerton will host their parkruns at 07h00 to give the participants enough time to get through to Parys for our 09h00 start. Meyerton is one of the newest events to join the parkrun family. They held their first event in the middle of November.

Parkruns are volunteer-based events where volunteers give of their time to present the events, record participant times, process results and post photos and news through Facebook pages.

Parkruns are free, timed events that are held at 08h00 on Saturday mornings. Registered participants receive an email after each event with their time and parkrun tally. Each parkrun completed counts towards the parkrun milestones of 50, 100 and 250 parkruns completed, for which a milestone tee shirt is awarded by parkrun sponsor Mr Price Sport. Parkruns also are also awarded points by Discovery Vitality. Unregistered participants are also welcome. Children under 11 must be accompanied by an adult. Parys parkrun is dog-friendly but note that dogs must be on a lead and only one dog per person.

Photo byAbe Kempen