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Challenges

Challenges

As a means of keeping runners engaged with parkrun, participants (and in some cases parkrun themselves) have drempt up a wide range of challenges. Some of the challenges are passive, such as All Weather Runner (tracked by the Running Challenges browser plugin), while others require more active engagement.

This page summarises the challenges that I am actively engaged with. My progress is highlighted, and is correct as at 14 May 2022.

Wilson index

This challenge is simply to have the highest index based on the length of the unbroken sequence of event numbers run at, starting at 1.

For brevity, I will only track the first 50 events until I make more progress.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
…

Fibonacci sequence

This challenge is based entirely on the number of times an event has been run, and to participate, one simply needs to run an event whose event number corrolates to a number in the Fibonacci sequence.

As the Fibonacci sequence is infinite, it's technically not possible to complete this challenge, but given an event only typically runs once per week, there is likely to be a gap of over 11 years between the first event reaching 987, and that same event reaching 1597 events, and a further 19 years until that same event reaches the next number in the sequence. Bushy is currently likely to be the first event to reach 987 events, and like not before 2024.

I initially started my Fibonacci journey manually checking event numbers, however, I soon found Keith Bennett's Event Number Predictor spreadsheet, which became an invaluable tool when it came to planning specific events.

1
1
2
3
5
8
13
21
34
55
89
144
233
377
610
987
1597
…

Alphabet

The alphabet challenge is what introduced me to parkrun! Simply run at an event whose name starts with every letter of the alphabet!

There are currently no parkrun events around the world whose name begins with an "X", and all of the events whose name begins with a "Z" are outside the UK, and so I've paused my progress towards this challenge at completion of the UK alphabet.

O
Oxford
P
Pymmes
T
Tring
X
No events
Y
York
Z
No UK events

Pirate

One of the challenges first popularised by parkrun was The Pirates Club. The challenge is simply to run 7 events starting with a "C", and another starting with an "R".

I haven't actively focussed on attaining this challenge, instead preferring to let the events accumulate naturally, and I finally completed the challenge at Chilton Fields parkrun on 22 October 2022.

The events I attended to complete the challenge were:

C
Catton

Snakes

As a number of parkrun challenge apps and websites became more prominant, they each introduced a number of challenges to cater to their audiences. Snakes is one of the challenges introduced by the Running Achievements app. The challenge is simply to run 10 events whose name starts with an "S".

As with the Pirate challenge, I haven't actively focussed on attaining this challenge, instead preferring to let the events accumulate naturally, and I finally completed the challenge at Swaffham parkrun on 03 September 2022.

The events I attended to complete the challenge were:

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