Becoming a MAN v FAT member is often the gateway to more regular participation in physical activity.

It doesn’t just have to be about chasing a football around, though, and many of you pull on your running shoes to support your fitness and weight loss goals.

We head to Warrington to find out from coach Dan Edwards and assistant coach Al Robinson about how the lads get involved in the local Park Run.

What is your inspiration for getting the community involved in Park Run?
The inspiration came from our Assistant Coach, Al Robinson, looking to enhance his running progress, improve his fitness so he could play more of a part in the MAN v FAT Football world, as an outfield player.

Al took on the Couch to 5K programme in June 2022 at the gym with Jon Parr, our other assistant coach. Al quickly decided that he would like to complete a 5k outside before his birthday in early September. This is where we looked into potentially an event but stumbled upon the Park Run. In September 2022 Al, Jon and myself completed a Park Run.

After this event we were talking and after posting the pictures to our own and our clubs social media we got some interest from other members of the community, looking to see if this was a potential regular thing moving forward.

From there we built up a stronghold of Warrington members completing the park run on a weekly basis.

How did you organise it?
Organising this was easier than most things because the hard work was already done, by the ParkRun team. We just had to work out how to engage our community, and thus birthed the MAN v FAT Warrington runners/joggers WhatsApp group.

This soon populated to a very healthy number (43) and allowed people to communicate when and where members of our community would be participating each week at the local northwest (and beyond) Park Runs.