Brooklyn Bridge parkrun, 21st March 2026

Niamh Garratt and Zoe Jukes were across the pond this weekend, so took part in a parkrun in an iconic location:

“Both aiming to reach 100 parkruns this year, and not being ones to miss out on a iconic parkrun scalp, we hopped on a 4 hour bus from Boston Massachusetts to New York, New York on Friday afternoon, with one goal on the mind, the Brooklyn Bridge parkrun.

This is a slight exaggeration as we were planning on going to New York anyway, but we did make our travel plans around ensuring we were in the city by Friday evening to allow a bright and early start on Saturday morning for a merry 9am 5k.

And what a merry morning it was! The sunny skies of New York decided to match our claremont sky blues – the parkrun director even commented that it was “nicest parkrun of the year so far”. It was also a taste of home, as every single person we spoke to at the start was British. Unusually, the run director here didn’t ask who was a tourist but asked for a show of hands of who was a local. Parkrun hasn’t quite taken off in the US as it has in the UK as it turns out- only about 10 of the 218 runners were locals!

The course runs up the Brooklyn Bridge park promenade snaking in and out of 4 piers and then heads straight back down through the park to the finish line. The route itself doesn’t go over the bridge but you have excellent views of both Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge on the way back, and also faint glimpses of the statue of liberty for the eagle eyed.

We both loved this parkrun and would recommend it to anyone visiting NYC. A fair warning for anyone wanting to do the parkrun later in the year that you will have to get up an hour earlier as it starts at 8am after April!

We may not have reached 100 parkruns yet but Zoë did pick up 100th place in this one!”

Sounds like a great experience – maybe some day!