Our local parkrun at Ecos celebrated its 500th parkrun on Saturday 4th November 2023.
‘Parkrun’ is a free, fun, and friendly weekly 5k community event. You can walk, jog, run, volunteer, or spectate – it's up to you! It takes place every Saturday at 9:30am. The event takes place at Ecos Park.
Our first event at Ecos, with the assistance of our local partner athletics club Ballymena Runners AC, was on 31 March 2012 and 86 runners completed the 5k course around the park.
Ecos parkrun is organised and overseen by a range of volunteers – and there is something for everyone at parkrun, from setting up the course, scanning people’s barcodes at the finish or ensuring everyone gets safely around the route as a marshal.
Over the years we have had over 600 people take on at least one volunteer role – recently Susanna Allen achieved a milestone for volunteering 250 times! We also have a number of young people who volunteer as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award qualification.
Many of the volunteers and runners at the first event are still involved at parkrun.
There were quite a few parkrun milestone t shirts on display at the celebration event. Every time you complete a parkrun you get a step closer to an official parkrun milestone, which rewards those who have finished 10 (for those under 18), 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500 parkruns.
When parkrun Founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt started Bushy Park Time Trial in London back in 2004, he had no idea that nearly 18 years later, not only would people still be showing up, but that the original 13 runners and 5 volunteers would have transformed to more than 210,000 walkers, joggers, and runners and more than 33,000 volunteers at over 2,100 events around the world, every single week.
Ecos is just one of a huge number of parkrun that make up a global social movement, milestones stay essential to its core principles.
Celebrating milestones reminds us that parkrun is not a race against others, but a weekly event that brings people together and encourages personal growth.
Some stats from Ecos Parkrun:
Average finishers per week: 136.8
Volunteers: 647
PBs: 11,627
Average finish time: 00:28:31
Female record: Kerry Bamber – 18:11 on 3 Jun 2023
Male record: Mark McKinstry – 15:07 on 23 Mar 2019
Age graded record: Tommy Hughes - 93.26% 17:03 on 23 Feb 2019
On Saturday at the 500th event there were 265 finishers with Sean Hasson form Ballymena Runners finishing first in a time of 17 minutes 50 seconds. Along the way around 30 runners finished in their quickest time a ‘personal best’ or ‘PB’.
Ballymena Runners AC are the partner club for Ecos parkrun, and the club had an impressive turnout of members. We also welcomed visitors from several local clubs and clubs from England and Ireland; County Antrim Harriers, Lagan Valley, Ballycastle Runners, Knaresborough Striders, Springwell RA, Saintfield Striders, Hairecanes RC, Orchard Eagles RC, Scrabo Striders, Stoke FIT, Dundrum Dublin RC, Maghery GAC and Island Triathlon Club.
As part of the celebrations there was a fun warmup session, and after the run finishers shared a huge 500th Celebration cake.
Just like the recent 10th anniversary event everyone had the opportunity to sign a giant parkrun ‘thank you’ card. It was a great way to thank the volunteers and for people to leave messages about why they like parkrun.
If you would like to find out more about parkrun or how to register for free, then visit the website www.parkrrun.org.uk. Lots of pictures from the day are on the Ecos parkrun facebook page.