parkrun challenges

Note: list and apps updated as of September 2023, after the 5K app decided to delete the number challenges and parkrun HQ came out with a statement discouraging parkrunners from chasing them. General post refreshed in April 2024.

parkrun does not need gamification and challenges to be great, it can be addictive and enjoyable as a local social event, as an occasional excuse for exercise or as motivation for quick or extended tourism to unexpected locations.

That said, a lot of official and unofficial parkrun challenges have been created to make it more engaging for people who enjoy completing lists and achievements. I find this to be fun, motivational and it helps keeping it new and fresh week after week.

These challenges can take a long time to complete and they are a lot. You can use several apps or a popular Chrome extension to track them.

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Order from chaos

Like most ‘fan-driven’ things, the development of parkrun challenges have gotten a bit out of control as it got more successful, so I think trying to create some order around it could be useful

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Official vs Unofficial parkrun challenges

1) Official: these are the parkrun challenges that were created by parkrun itself and they are limited to milestones, ie reaching a number of events run/walked or volunteered at.

These milestones are the most well known parkrun challenges and the easiest to track: you will receive an email from parkrun telling you when you have reached one. Also, parkrun sells merchandising to mark your achievements.

2) Unofficial: this is where the real meat is. I will only focus on the parkrun challenges that have become ‘established’. Otherwise, the only limit is your imagination: with the help of the wonderful 5K app, you can create your own challenges and the app will track completion levels for you.

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Unofficial parkrun challenges: main categories

1) Indices: just a number. Based on some more or less complicated series of events you have completed, you get a number that gets more difficult to achieve the higher you go. Higher index numbers give you bragging rights if you care about it

2) Completion lists: the bulk of it, complete certain combinations of events or achieve certain combinations of finish times and you will progress on each specific item

3) Maps: originally limited limited to the Chrome extension or dedicated websites, some apps are also starting to integrate them partially. Specifically, the 5K app has included a layer option to see the Voronoi parkrun map in April 2024.

I find the last two groups of ‘achievements’ quite fun and motivational to pick new events to visit while you can see your progress ‘conquering the world’ visually

Indices

1) Tourist streak: as simple as it sounds, this counts the longest consecutive streak of different parkrun events you have run. Your local event or events you had already visited can be part of a streak as long as you don’t go to the same one twice. A streak is broken when you visit an event that is included in the streak that is running itself.

2) P Index: this one is kind of cool and it gets harder and harder as you increase it. It also incentives mixing tourism with returning to your local favourites, which is a good things. The index shows the maximum number of events that you have run ‘p’ times. In the example, it shows that there are 5 events that I have run at least 5 times. So, to get a p index of 5, you need 25 events, to get it up to 6, you would 36 events and so on.

3) V Index: same as above, but for volunteering. It shows the number of volunteering roles (not venues) that you have performed v times

4) pC-Index: same as the P index, but looking at countries. If you ran 2 events in 2 countries, it will be at 2 and so on;

5) re-Index: how many different locations have you repeated at least once. This index was added by the RunningAchievements app in August 2023

My lowest Wilson event is Thames Path, Woolwich, which I was lucky enough to visit on its second ever event – and I loved it.

Maps

These ones are pretty cool, but your mileage might vary if you, like me, have gone pretty much laptop-less outside of work. The main way to enjoy them is via a Chrome extension and until April 2024 there wasn’t any way to make them work easily on iOS. Also, the extension does not offer anything that cannot be found on the more convenient apps. That said, I still go to it once a week because they do show tourist progress in a nice visual way and they also offer new reasons to target your explorations and plan future trips

As of late April 2024, a basic version of the Voronoi map is offered as an optional layer on the 5K app. It does not look as good on a small screen and the algorithm used to calculate the shapes is slightly different, but it is a great addition. As of May 2024, a Voronoi map layer has also been added to the Running Achievements app. I think it looks closer to what we were using to on the Chrome extension, compared to the 5K app option. That said, both are great! You can now start filling your maps also without the Chrome extension if you want to.

1) Voronoi event map

A world map divided into geometric shapes (Voronoi diagram) centred around a parkrun venue. The ‘diamonds’ are filled once you have visited an event, giving you a way to track how much of the world, or of your region, you have explored. If you have time and money for it, you could conquer the world, I guess

I have snapped a few screen pictures going from global to local, to give you an idea of how it looks. These represent my progress as of 17 May 2023, when I had completed 101 parkrun across 48 different events and 3 countries (UK, Italy, Netherlands).

Clockwise, the pictures show the global map, with flags showing you where parkrun is present. Need motivation to go to New Zealand for a quick weekend? I’m sure there is someone somewhere who was crazy enough to to do it 🙂

If you zoom in to Europe, you see big coloured diagrams where you have been. The event density in countries other than the UK is much lower, so my Milano Nord or Den Hague events are very visible also from this view.

The UK is parkrunland, so every single event will have a much smaller impact on your progress, especially if you are centred around an area as dense as the South East/London. Before zooming in too much you can see a few escapades from the big smoke: a bit of Surrey, Hove Promenade, Poole… up North you would see South Manchester is also done (day before my first marathon).

But besides those few, I have been focusing on my ‘local’ area. I think this is cool as it shows concrete but slow progress and it forces you to ‘fill those gaps’ motivating you to further exploration. Eventually, my current map-face will swallow Reigate. Sorry not-sorry.

2) Bullseye ‘record chaser’

Same concept, but with a different twist: the site calculates the ‘geographical centre’ of all your parkrun events and calculates a bullseye area of concentric circles around it. Then it gives you a list and a visual map and challenges you to complete it. At the moment I seem to have a demon with the eye set on my current centre (Lloyd). Funnily enough, this became the shape when I ran event 666 in Roundshaw Downs… scary! 🙂

To make things more complicated, the centre of the bullseye target is recalculated every time you run a new event. I have not understood yet if it is a weighted average or a straight one… if the latter, I guess going for a random event in East Asia would put your centre in one of the suspended Russian locations, making things kind of impossible without long haul weekly trips.

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Completion lists

And now we tackle the elephant in the room, the many challenges that involve completing words with letters claimed running an event whose name starts with it, running events in specific locations or regions, running specific event numbers or on specific dates or finishing in certain times.

It’s endless and pointless. But fun and motivating.

I will use the two main parkrun mobile apps as the bible to list the most established achievements, but as said, anyone can create a new one and try to push it on one of the many dedicated social media groups.

The tables below show how the ‘achievement tabs’ look in the two main apps, 5K and RunningAchievements. The last picture is the reason why RunningAchievement is still relevant in my view: it offers a ‘regional tick list’ that 5K does not offer.

First off, let’s try to organise them thematically. There is just so much you can do with a run event that wants to de-emphasise times, so it will mostly be achievements based on where or when you attended an event.

• Words and letters: complete a word (real or made up) claiming each letter running an event starting with it or complete the alphabet
• Dates: Run events in certain dates
• Geographic: visit one or more events linked by location or features of their locations
• Events: special occasions or special events
• Number series: claim a number in a specific number series by running the an event number at any parkrun venue

Words and Letters

Achievement	Description	5K	RunAch	My %
Alphabeteer	All letters in the alphabet	X	X	88%
Beehive	20 Bs and a Q(ueen)		X	62%
Bjorn to run	All parkrun starting with Amber, ABBA or Aba		X	0%
Cassabeteer	6 Alphabets		X	44%
Full Ponty	Events with Ponty in the name		X	0%
Namely	All letters in your name and surname	X		58%
Old MacDonald	E I E I O	X	X	40%
Parkrun	All letters in ‘parkrun’	X		100%
Pirates	C C C C C C C R	X	X	88%
Snakes	S S S S S S S S S S	X	X	80%
Staying Alive	B B B G G G	X	X	100%

Dates

Achievement	Description	5K	RunAch	My %
Christmas Day	Run on 25/12	X		100%
Date Bingo	Attend a parkrun on every day of the year	X	X	40%
Festive double	Run a parkrun on Xmas and one of 1/1 during the same season	x		100%
Monthly	Attend a parkrun on every month	X		100%
Parkrun obsessive	Attend 30, 40, 50 or 55 for bronze, silver, gold, platinum in 1 year	X	X	Silver

Note that on RunningAchievements, ‘parkrun obsessive’ is split in 4 different achievements

Geographic

Achievement	Description	5K	RunAch	My %
Albaloopy	Completes all runs in Scotland twice		X	0%
All Saints	Run all UK events with Saint in the name		X	0%
Bay Watch	Run all UK events with Bay in the name		X	0%
Compass	Run N/S/W/E most events in the UK		X	0%
Dizzy Heights	Run the 3 highest altitude events in the UK		X	0%
Compass Club	Attend events whose name includes the 4 compass points	X	X	50%
Cowell Club	Attend 100 different events	X	X	78%
Double Ton	Attend 200 parkruns at the same location	X		12%
Freyne Club	Attend 250 different parkrun locations	X	X	31%
Great Halls of Fire	Run all events with ‘Hall’ in the name		X	0%
Greater Bristol	Run all events in and around Bristol		X	0%
Highland	Complete 50 different events in Scotland		X	0%
Jetsetter	Attend a parkrun in 5 different countries	X		100%
Jordan	Complete at least one event in each of the UK regions		X	38%
King of the Castle	Run all UK events with Castle in the name		X	0%
Lon-Done	Run all events in London		X	84%
Plenty of NT	Plenty of NT		X	4%
Re-Freyne Club	Attend 500 different parkrun locations		X	10%
Single Ton	Attend 100 events at the same location	X		25%
South East	Attend all events in the UK South East region		x	17%
Time Trials	Run the original 10 events		x	40%
Tourist	Run at 20 different events	X	x	100%
Ups and Downs	Run at the 10 most undulating events		X	0%
We were Here	Attend an event that no longer exists	x		0%
Where it all started	Attend an event at Bushy Park	x	X	100%
World Tourist	Attend a parkrun in every country (4 countries for RunAch)	x	x	25%
Yellow Belly	Run all the events in Lincolnshire		X	0%

Note that RunningAchievements does not recognise the words for N/S/W/E if they are not spelled in English, while 5K does. Also, RunningAchievements offers a tab to track regional completion achievements similar to Lon-Done and South East for all countries and UK Régions. I have only included Lon-Done and South East simply because those are the two I am currently tracking

Events

Achievement	Description	5K	RunAch	My %
Groundhog Day	Finish with the same time at the same location on two consecutive events	X		0%
Palindrome	Finish with a palindrome time, ie 25:52	X		0%
Stopwatch Bingo	Get all the seconds from 00 to 59 in your finish times	X	X	92%

Number series

Update as of 7/723: the 5K app has deleted the number challenges on request of parkrun HQ. These challenges do not appear automatically anymore as of this date and parkrun HQ strongly encourages parkrunners NOT TO flock to events on purpose to tick the box on event numbers. This is particularly important for ‘high numbers’ on something like Nelson..

Achievement	Description	5K	RunAch	My %
Fibonacci	Attend a parkrun whose event number matches the Fibonacci sequence	(X)		50%
Nelson	Attend a parkrun whose event number is a multiple of 11	(X)		78%
Prime	Attend a parkrun whose event number is a prime number	(X)		22%