While many runners tend to just go to their local 5k parkrun, some become parkrun tourists and visit other locations. This inevitably leads to lists of various sorts.
One of these is the challenge of doing parkruns by letters of the alphabet i.e. B for Ballincollig, M for Midleton and so on. I covered this is a previous post... https://corkrunning.blogspot.com/2023/12/doing-5k-parkruns-by-letter.html
Someone recently me about the runners who try the Pioneer Challenge and this requires that you complete the first event in every current parkrun country.
The first event in Ireland is Malahide, the first one in the UK is Bushy Park and so on.
At the last update, one person had 12 countries. There are 1872 people on the list at present and the minimum number of countries is four.
You can find the full list HERE
It's interesting to note on the map the countries in Europe where there are no parkruns at present.
This Is Surely Creating A Large Carbon Footprint
ReplyDeleteIf you're gonna do all that travel a better and more useful challenge would be to offer to volunteer at all those new parkruns. They generally need the help on their first event more than they need the extra numbers.
ReplyDeleteNice novel idea, but as always plenty of naysayers, as per above, first time park runs always like to see a good crowd. As for the carbon footprint I’d say probably small enough in the scheme of things
ReplyDelete"first time park runs always like to see a good crowd"
DeleteThat's not actually true at all. At least not in the way you are saying it. Of course first time parkruns like to see a good show of locals so they know the event is going to keep going. Inflated numbers from tourists doing inaugurals do nothing for this and just make the job of a new team of volunteers harder.
I personally know event teams that have been really worried that the first day gets silly numbers that their location can't accommodate comfortably. Bigger isn't always better.
Surely that's the oldest in each country, e.g. Malahide in Ireland, Bushy for the UK, etc... The parkrun that pioneered the event in that country?
ReplyDelete