Calli Thackery and Scott Stirling ran the fastest parkrun times in the UK this weekend (29th July).

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Well, that was a fast Saturday for parkrun times! Not content with being second in the list last week, Calli Thackery was at Endcliffe and was top of the pops today. 16:09 was enough to secure the top spot, but only by nine seconds, such was the quality this week.

Up in Scotland Scott Stirling was flying around Aviemore parkrun with an electric 14:55 to finish first and clock the fastest time of the weekend too. It’s been a good year over the 5k distance for Stirling with a 13:56 at Armagh 5k (surprisingly only good enough for 14th!) and a parkrun PB of 14:45 at the start of July too.

Everyone running fast

Second fastest female, in a time that normally warrants a first place, was parkrun top 10 regular Lauren Heyes. The international runner is a fan of parkrun course records and 16:18 at South Manchester was…. another one! And not a soft one either, but one taken from Jess Piasecki. Chapeau!

Third fastest female was another super rapid time of 16:28 by Dundee Hawkhill harrier Natasha Phillips. It’s a parkrun PB for the U20 who’s on the up and up, but not quite as quick as the 5000m and 5k road PBs of 16:18.50 and 16:12 respectively. More impressively today’s parkrun was actually about 10k pace with a 32:57 Pb in May too.

Two chaps ran 14:56 for equal second fastest male with Mike Christoforou and Jethro McGraw having a virtual photo finish in different parks. Only difference though, is that McGraw had four others runners in the 13 seconds following him so was running from a bunch of parkrun hares. Which leads nicely onto the fastest course this week…

Fastest course

Some weeks I have to double check multiple times which parkrun (or parkruns) feature most but other weeks it leaps out a little. This is the latter. Walsall Arboretum had five runners in the men’s top 10 and made it even by two lots of pairs too. If this was a game of poker they had the highest hand too.

Women’s Rankings

Men’s Rankings