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

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

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

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

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.