Abstract
Recent years have witnessed great interest in mass-participation running events (1), and organisations such as parkrun and fitness programmes like Couch to 5 K, have been instrumental in enabling participation for inexperienced runners. Concomitant with this has been a number of fictional works which centre on the 5 K run. I contend that exploring fictional texts can offer a fresh take on how movements such as parkrun and Couch to 5 K have entered the popular imagination. The four texts explored are Wake'sSaturday Morning Park Run(2020), Park'sA Run in the Park(2019), Boleyn'sComing Home to Cariad Cove(2022), and James'sI Follow You(2020). The analysis is arranged thematically around the categories of health promotion, individual transformation, and community building. I argue that these texts frequently operate as health promotion tools and can help familiarise would-be runners with how parkrun and Couch to 5 K work.
Subject
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management,Anthropology,Orthopedics and Sports Medicine,Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation,Physiology