The WWWP5K: Your Photos and Stories
Fun, fitness, and community: some stories from the annual WWWP5K.
Last week we asked the WordPress.com community to join us for 5 km of walking, jogging, running, or hiking as part of our annual Automattic Worldwide WordPress 5K. The response was fabulous — check out some stories and photos from bloggers who participated around the world.
Surprises on the trail
With a bald eagle rumoured to be nearby, nature photographer Leola Durant overachieved the 5k, walking 7.57 miles on October 27th. While a great shot of the eagle eluded her, she did capture many beautiful photos of birds and animals on her walk. Our favorite is this fuzzy racoon leaning out of a tree.
Photo by Leola Durant
From elusive eagles, we go to brazen barred owls. Paula, in addition to reporting on her 3.1 mile run for the event, offers advice to unlucky runners in Lake Stevens, Washington, who might find themselves subject to barred owl attacks during their outings:
There are reports of owls dive-bombing runners and people during this time of year. It’s mostly the barred owls and great-horned owls who do this. They become highly territorial at the start of winter, hunkering down and preparing their nests for upcoming baby season. Owls are brave and think nothing of “attacking” humans. Wave your hands slowly overhead back and forth to keep them at bay and then leave the area. They’re just trying to protect their home, so don’t take it personally.
The reasons we run
Author James Schannep dedicated his WWWP5K to raising money for a friend. He asked readers not only to do their own WWWP5K, he also promised to shave his head and beard if his readers amassed $1500 in donations toward speech therapy for Alan Martinez, a US Air Force Academy classmate recovering after being hit by a drunk driver in 2012.
James Schannep dedicated his WWW5k to his friend, Alan Martinez
Truly international
Blogger Philip took us for an early-morning run along the idyllic waterfront in Copenhagen, Denmark:
The run starts in Copenhagen’s new hip neighborhood, Sluseholmen. From there you simply follow the waterfront trail enjoying the morning mist hovering over the water and the swooshing sounds of oars as they glide by.
Photo by Philip
Blogger Jillian took us on a photo tour of her 5k walk in Brisbane, Australia, where the Jacaranda trees are in full bloom. She enjoyed her walk so much, she’s decided to extend her usual 2.5k route to 5k, regularly!
Jacaranda tree photo by Jillian
Solo, but never alone
Automattician Andrea enjoyed the fresh autumn air and captured some beautiful scenery along her route:
While she ran the WWWP5K solo, she wasn’t alone:
Solo but with others is kind of the story of my life right now. As an employee of a distributed company, with teammates all over the world, I am physically alone in my home office, but am mentally together with people all day long. I chatter online at with customers from around the world and with colleagues in California, Florida, Texas, Washington, Canada, Wales, Sweden, England, Austria, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia…
I never feel alone, even though I am the only one in the room.
Congratulations to walkers and runners the world over who participated in this year’s Worldwide WP 5k! For more reports, check out the #WWWP5k tag in the Reader.
- November 4, 2015
- Community
WordPress.com News 
Congratulations WP, thanks for building our community and planet!
LikeLiked by 6 people
Wow, thanks for featuring my charity run for Alan!
Only $500 more needed and I’ll have to shave my head…
LikeLiked by 9 people
Awesome and inspiring pictures!
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Great idea. I loved the pictures.
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Thank you so much for displaying my photo. I enjoyed taking part in the challenge.
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I enjoyed reading your post. Sorry you weren’t able to get the photo of the bald eagle you had wanted.
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Thank you…I didn’t get him that day, but I was able to get some shots of him after that.
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Congratulations to everyone who completed their 5K! 😀
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Great photos of WordPressers running in all corners of the world!
Here is mine: http://chaitpress.com/2015/10/26/worldwide-wp-5k-2015/
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Maybe too late, but +1 (or +10 miles) from Odessa, Ukraine
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For the last year I have been walking 4 – 5 miles everyday. I have since walked a portion of the Camino de Santiago last September/October. It was the fulfillment of an item on my “life to-do” list. Needless to say, now when I walk I see the world (such as it is in rural NY state) quite differently. Thanks for the beautiful pictures and the stories.
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Love the story.
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It took me two outings with a rest between but I reached the goal. It was good to be challenged. Thanks for the push. Now I have an idea of the pace of coming back from 4 possibly 5 foot surgeries.
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I envy those of you able to participate in the 5K. Wish I could’ve been part of it, but fibromyalgia laid me low more than 25 years ago and halted my hiking 10 years ago. I would have loved to share some desert pics with you.
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Great photos! I try to walk, run or bike ride every day, getting up and moving.
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Beautiful pictures!!
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I love running but I have never done a 5k. I do have to say that I absolutely love the idea of using something so simple to achieve something so great. In my community there is a high school student, female, that was diagnosed with cancer and the students as well as the community joined together and created an event to raise money so that the girl and her family could have enough money for treatments. The event was a run while dressed up as a super hero and it raised more than enough money. Running brings you closer to nature. Running makes you one with nature. Running connects people.
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Running a 5k is most definitely on my bucket list!
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I walked and hobbled but was able to make the 5K over two sessions. Completing the goal has started intensified the need to rehab from my five foot surgeries. This comes from a gal that two years ago hiked the South Island of New Zealand including the treacherous Avalanche Peak. I will get back! Thanks for the push.
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Great and wonderful post,beautiful pictures everywhere,you just made my night glowing.
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