Geraint Thomas has wasted little time spreading his wings in retirement.
The 2018 Tour de France champion, who called time on a glittering 19-year professional career after the Tour of Britain in September, revealed on Friday’s Watts Occurring podcast that he took part in his first Parkrun last weekend, ahead of his brother’s wedding in South Wales.
Parkrun, established in 2004, has become a global sensation, with more than 2,300 weekly, community-led 5km running events, and more than nine million registered participants.
“It was weird going to it,” said Thomas. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s just a 5k run’. Then I turned up and obviously there’s a mix [of people] there.
“There’s a few that look quite good, then it’s just families and a few people keeping fit, but I was like, ‘This is a whole new world now, isn’t it?’”
Thomas swapped his cycling shoes for running trainers at the Severn Bridge event, which crosses the border between South Wales and England. The event is one of the most iconic Parkrun events in the country, seeing runners cross the suspension bridge over the River Severn into England, before doing a U-turn and returning to Wales.
Thomas’ ex-team-mate and podcast co-host, Luke Rowe, asked the question we were all thinking: what time did he do it in?
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“Well, I didn’t have my QR code, so I couldn’t get an official time, but the guy I was with did 19:50 minutes and I was a bit behind him,” said Thomas. “He dropped me on the downhill.
"I reckon I was just under 20 [minutes]."
Will Thomas catch the Parkrun bug and return to better his time? Turns out it didn’t take long for his time to improve – but not in the way that we might expect.
“As [my brother’s] wedding was going on, my time was getting better,” joked Thomas. “By midnight, I was doing 16-something.”
The average Parkrun finishing time is 29:32 minutes. The men’s record of 13:44 minutes was set by Nick Griggs in November 2024, while the women’s Parkrun record of 15:13 minutes was set by Ciara Mageean in December 2023.
The 5,000m world record on the track is faster still, with the current mark of 12:35.36 minutes established by Joshua Cheptegei in Monaco in 2020.
Cheptegei went on to win 5,000m gold at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics Games in 2021, before winning the 10,000m event at the Paris Games in 2024.
