If you'd asked me how many parkruns I might do when someone first encouraged me to go to this "parkrun" thing back in January 2017, I might have guessed that I'd get to 50.
While it took me til August that year to get around to printing a barcode and rocking up to an event, I did enjoy it and realised I would happily do more.
Doing repeats at one single event didn't inspire me at all, and it was only when another long-time parkrunner introduced me to "parkrun tourism" that I even got started.
My initial streak was 23 different events in a row. But as a solo runner, with no parkrun friends at that point, I watched people saying 'hi' to each other as they ran past, and realised I wanted community too.
So, I started doing some repeats of my favourite courses in my then-hometown of Sydney.
Fast forward to 1st January 2019, and I was housesitting in Brisbane. Like any good tourist, I made the most of the opportunity and picked up letters for my alphabet 😁
First, a warm and sunny Ashgrove. Then, a ridiculously hot Zillmere. Turns out, another parkrunner was partaking in some tourism that day: Brad had been dragged along to get an A and a Z by a persistent friend.
He spotted me in my bare feet and called out to say hello as we ran the home stretch of the grassy Zillmere course.
7+ years later, here I am, sitting on the couch in our home in Brisbane 🥰
In that time, I've done the lion's share of these 350 parkruns. We've done every parkrun within 3 hours of home (apart from the two newest ones that we'll pick up soon).
We've run (or occasionally walked) at parkruns in NSW, ACT, SA, TAS and both the North and South Islands of NZ.
We've baked in the humidity of a parkrun in both Singapore and Malaysia, and thoroughly enjoyed our experiences of Japanese parkruns.
And a small handful of those 350 parkruns were done in the UK and Europe last year, when we visited England, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands 🤩
If you'd asked me how many parkruns I would visit when someone first told me about parkrun tourism, I would never have guessed that I'd get to 174 locations through a combination of running, walking and volunteering at adult and junior events.
It's been a wild ride so far. And yet, with more travel plans afoot, me thinks there is much to come 😉
Photo of me crossing the line for my 350th run/walk at parkrun was taken by my Mister, Brad. Photo directly above is a screenshot from the parkrun app.
