Dulwich park run - 22nd November 2025

THE THING WITH running communities is you get dragged into things you don't see coming, but that's one of the pleasures of being involved with a creative community that want to get involved in all sorts of shenanigans!   And if you are a bit like me, enthusiastic, you get dragged along in their wake.   The first time I got involved I ended up in Jersey on a parkrun!

The idea came from J&M Runners, we were to meet up as a group and run one of the London parkruns, in this case Dulwich.   Please don't think this is a one off J&M have a history of parkrun tourism and travel miles just to get another one under their belt.   This can be for a variety of reasons, the run begins with a letter in the alphabet they need, or is part of the Fibonacci sequence.   Whatever, they are an amazing, motivating run group.   I have never done a London parkrun and was very keen to get involved and looking forward to it.

The evening before I got the message, "You need to wear a toutou".   Like I own one of those, and even more importantly why?    There was no time for questions and I sent a message round to people I knew asking if they have one?   Jo, three doors up from me came back with a positive response and she brought in around.   I was now armed with a toutou and ready for another J&M experience.

Early the next morning we met on the railway station at Haywards Heath with our toutou's.   It turned out that the run was on Saturday 22nd, or to put it another way two-two (or totou).    This is the type of crazy community engagement that I was referring to at the begging of the article.   But it was too late, I was at the railway station with my toutou and it was too late to pull out!

Dulwich is a beautiful park in London and was a three lap course.   It was friendly and I was asked several times running the course, "Do you normally run in a toutou".   One person I tried to explain that I was a sound engineer and it's how we test the microphones, "One, one, toutou".    I think they believed I was serious!

I have to say I love those J&M Runners, they are always enthusiastic and welcoming which makes the whole thing contagious, how could you say no, when you know it's going to be a great day with them.