When her local parkrun shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions, Merrilyn McMillan was, in her words, "devastated".
"I was totally lost," she told ABC Sport.
"It was like someone had died."
Just over a decade ago, the now 73-year-old McMillan had no inkling that the community-based activity would become such an integral part of her life.
Her husband, Malcolm, a keen runner, had read about the arrival of the global phenomenon in Adelaide in the local paper.
While he ran the 5km Torrens course, she would sit in the car knitting and reading the news.
One Saturday morning, when no volunteers turned up, Merrilyn was "rounded up" to help out.
Now, the once reluctant volunteer is a veteran of no less than 412 parkruns, all the more remarkable because she has never walked or run the event.
So what keeps her coming back?
"And you feel appreciated. The participants are constantly saying thank you, and it gives them an anchor too, like when you've gone away on holidays and come back, they say 'oh we've missed you'."
"I mean, it's lovely to get praise," she added.
"But at the same time, you're not doing it for the praise. To me it's just something I do which benefits me.
"It makes you feel like you've got something to contribute — you don't feel so useless. I think it's good for your self-esteem, and your mental health is a big part of your physical health."
When parkrun first came to Adelaide, McMillan had been out of work for 10 years.
She had previously worked in the office of an equipment testing company, but after a restructure that saw staff numbers reduced dramatically, McMillan found herself taking on more and more responsibilities.
"I was always one of those people who just managed to get everything done," she said.
"And then suddenly, I wasn't getting things done. It was all too much and physically I started to break down."
McMillan, who was surviving on — "no joke" — 18 cups of coffee a day, eventually fell ill with pneumonia.
One consequence of the pneumonia was that she could no longer stand the smell or taste of coffee. Then the excruciating headaches began.
"And then I collapsed in the neurologist's rooms."
What followed, according to McMillan, was a "full mental breakdown".
The neurologist sent her straight to hospital and into the care of a dedicated mental health team.
With the help of an "extremely good psychiatrist", among others, McMillan slowly began to recover, but she never returned to work.
"The first 10 years after [finishing work], I didn't make a lot of progress, because I sort of isolated myself, went into myself," she said.
"So it took a bit to get back out there.
"They say that exercise is good for your mental health, but being a parkrun volunteer is as good as it gets. It's the best possible medication — you can't bottle it."
60,000 people volunteer more than half a million times without running or walking
This national volunteer week, parkrun is celebrating some remarkable milestones.
Globally, just under 60,000 people like McMillan have never run or walked the event, but between them have volunteered half a million times.
In Australia, over the 11 years since the event first arrived, a total of 126,542 people have volunteered.
And, since pandemic restrictions eased, parkrun has maintained its pre-COVID number of volunteers, including recruiting 11,933 people to the event for the first time.
Carol Cunningham, head of volunteering management at parkrun, said this was in part due to how "easy and accessible" signing up is.
"You could literally walk to your car, come along tomorrow and say 'I want to volunteer', and we'd say 'no dramas, come and help over here'," Cunningham said.
Cunningham said parkrun also had the advantage of being an outdoor activity, which allowed for social distancing and "easing into" physical activity.
"There's still some anxiety in the community around COVID… and many people have come out of two years of the pandemic where they've been inactive. They haven't been around people, and volunteering offers them an opportunity to be out in the fresh air and do a bit of movement," she said.
"It helps people get back to where they were before COVID, reassures them, builds their confidence back up and gives them an alternative pathway to be out in their community."
Volunteering 'a bit of an addiction', says Mosman local
Connection to community is what gets Robyn Lindsay out of bed every Saturday morning to volunteer at the 7am Mosman parkrun in Sydney.
Since 2015, the 66-year-old has volunteered a total of 255 times.
"I'm not a runner, I'm more of a plodder," says Lindsay.
"I have done some runs, but I wasn't happy with my 30-minute-plus times. That's pure vanity.
"So I fell into volunteering, and it has become a bit of an addiction."
Each Saturday, Lindsay stations herself in the same spot: a hill near the Mosman spit bridge that has affectionately become known — by fellow parkrunners — as "Robyn's Hill".
Part of the appeal of being stationed on the hill, she says, is that the Mosman course sees participants walk or run the hill three times.
"I get to be up there by myself, taking in all the beautiful scenery, but also chatting with the runners and cyclists passing through, and people walking their dogs.
"There's people from all different walks of life that I would never have met had I not gone to parkrun."
As an example, she cites meeting the chairlift operator at Taronga Park Zoo, and a young woman who is a chef by training, works for Google and dreams of being stationed as a scientist in Antarctica.
What they have in common, she says, is how happy they are to be at parkrun — and in each other's company.
"When people come up the hill, they're huffing and puffing and saying things like 'I hate this hill', 'this is so nasty', and no-one told me about this hill… but they're happy, even when they're complaining.
"It definitely feels like a family. You don't go to parkrun and feel like you're an outsider."
'Like an extended family,' says Sandon Point volunteer
For others, volunteering at parkrun is their entry point to community.
Born in Morocco and having lived in the Netherlands from a young age, 62-year-old Erno van Alphen arrived in Australia just over five years ago.
Back in the Netherlands, he worked for an oil and gas company, before moving into superannuation.
His wife Marie Louise, a registered nurse, had done some of her degree in Perth, and had always wanted to return to Australia.
When he sought — but was eventually denied — a company transfer to Australia, he and his wife decided to pack up and leave anyway.
"I met a guy in Byron Bay, who was like, 'well, why don't you just do it? There's always a visa that applies to you. Just look, and you'll find one,'" says van Alphen.
"So, I did — and then I told my boss, 'I'm quitting, we're going.'"
Three of their five daughters came with them, and they settled in Mount Keira, just out of Wollongong.
Van Alphen, however, found it difficult to find a new job, and instead shifted his focus to helping his daughters settle into Australia.
About four years ago, his youngest daughter took part in the Duke of Edinburgh program, which led her to volunteer at the local parkrun.
Van Alphen offered to go along with her, initially reluctant because of his perceived difficulty with English — as well as his personality.
"I'm a little bit of a shy person, and the language was a bit of a barrier," he says.
"I didn't know what parkrun was, and what I had to do. I also felt responsible being the timekeeper — I didn't want to get people's times wrong.
"But they make you feel very welcome. It's kind of like a big family, after a while you get to know a lot of people."
For van Alphen, this has led to a series of encounters with people in his community that wouldn't have occurred otherwise.
One parkrunner invited him to fill in for his basketball team — the sport van Alphen played back home — while another volunteer's partner helped him out when he was struggling to finish renovating his deck in time before some heavy rain.
Van Alphen has also found himself providing support to others.
"One guy has just gotten divorced, so he always comes up to have a talk because he needs some social contact," he says.
"And now another — he just got a diagnosis of Parkinson's — and I told him, you have to keep moving, because he can't run anymore. So I'm trying to encourage him, stimulate him to do something and now he plays table tennis."
Van Alphen is also helping one parkrunner move into a nursing home. He has offered to transfer her photos and paintings from her home into her new room.
Over time, these connections have helped him not only improve his English, but feel more at home in his adopted country.
"I keep going back because of the family feeling: it's like an extended family."
