The PRR Winter parkrun Challenge has finished its fifth season!
Congratulations to Liz Johnston, the winner of the 2025-2026 season, and to all those who completed the challenge. Results below.
Come back in November for WpC v6.0!
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The Winter parkrun Challenge (WpC) is a recent PRR creation. First piloted in the winter of 2019 by Kevin Rogers, and advanced since by Mike Dales, it has become a popular feature of the winter schedule. At the 5K running distance, it is accessible to nearly all members. It also features:
- a good smattering of travel/tourism/exotic places (eg Arbroath, Falkirk, industrial Fife);
- mid-morning snacking;
- impenetrably complex results tables;
- late-season competitive tension; and
- by use of age-grading, an esoteric/tacky trophy that can be equally competed for by everybody.
The challenge is to run five non-Perth parkruns over the winter months. In 2025-26, the “parkrun season” was between 22nd November 2025 and 14th February 2026 (inclusive). The five parkruns were:
- Aberfeldy (FeldyRoo, if you must)
- Riverside Park (Glenrothes)
- Falkirk
- Loch Leven
- Wildcard – any parkrun in the world, but can’t be Perth (the UK one).
Smarter/competitive PRRs tend to choose something as flat, fast (and possibly short?) as possible for their wildcard. If looking for inspiration in this regard, try here.
There is a condition you must fulfil in order to be included in the WpC:
+ You will need to have Perth Road Runners registered as your club on the parkrun website. That will mean that your name will have the club name alongside it in the results and you will then be flagged up in the consolidated club results on the parkrun website; and
There are two league tables throughout the Challenge season, but only one trophy at the end of the season:
- The first league table is be based on your mean average age grading over your five runs.
- The second table is your cumulative time for your five runs.
The trophy is awarded to the PRR who (both) completes the Challenge and ends the season with the highest average age grading. Thus, young and old, male and female are competing on a level ‘running surface’.
You may run each parkrun as many times as you can manage, allowing improvement across the season. You may also visit as many parkruns as you like for your wildcard. Your fastest time and age grading will be recorded.
If you pass a significant milestone birthday within the season, then you might run slightly slower after your birthday, but get a slightly better age grade. This will be picked up at race HQ.
A key objective/proviso of the WpC is that it not diminish the team performances of PRR at this winter’s cross-country fixtures. We encourage PRRs competing in the WpC – and who are also XC runners – to avoid clashes of their parkruns with key XC fixtures. To this end, the WpC window opens after the early fixtures of the season (and specifically the National Relays) and ends before the National Championships.
Previous results
