Return of the stats - parkrun milestones

Since I was last blogging regularly, back in October 2013, there have been some amazing parkrun milestones. So in case you have missed some of those, here is a quick update....

Weekly finishers in the UK: 

Back in October 2013, the highest number of UK parkrun finishers in a single week was 35,518. That was an impressive record, but just 18 months later and the record is now a staggering 61,754 and it has been well over 55,000 every week since January. Given recent yearly trends, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new record in excess of 70,000 within a few weeks as the Spring weather lures out some parkrunners from their Winter hibernation as well as attracting a few that have been waiting for some nicer weather before making their parkrun debut. 

Number of events:

There are now 621 registered parkrun locations worldwide.

In the UK we had just over 220 parkrun locations back in October 2013, but we have added nearly another 100 locations in the last 18 months with 319 UK parkrun locations currently.

Registered runners:

When I was last blogging we hadn't yet reached 1 million registered parkrunners and now we have well over 1.5 million people registered with parkrun worldwide.

Total finishers:

There have now been an incredible 6,568,367 parkrun finishers in the UK.

Different runners:

A ridiculous 660,225 different people have now completed at least 1 parkrun in the UK. Just imagine how busy all our events would be if even 25% of those all decided to turn up one week!

Highest attendance record:

As you might expect, Bushy parkrun (the original location and home of parkrun) still holds the record with a massive 1705 runners set on 4th October 2014. Back in October 2013 that record was "just" 1051, so quite an increase! Also, 26 different UK parkrun events now have an attendance record of over 500 and there are 5 more over the 500 mark in Australia.

Non-returning parkrunners:

This isn't a figure I'd like to dwell on, but some 307,088 runners have only ever completed a single, solitary parkrun. I'm hoping a big chunk of those were in recent weeks and will be back soon!

500 club member:

parkrun now has it's very first member of the 500 club. Just a couple of weeks ago, Darren Wood completed his 500th parkrun. Unbelievably, the second highest number of runs is currently 441, so it will be well over a year before we have a second member of the 500 club.

250 club members:

There are now 221 members of the 250 club - the club for parkrunners that have run 250 parkruns or more.

I don't think I'm exactly sticking my neck out to say that "I think parkrun might just be here to stay"!