Parkrun Speed Checker
Compare parkrun difficulty rankings
Parkrun Speed Checker - Find How Fast Any UK Parkrun Is
How to Use Our Parkrun Speed Checker
Use our parkrun speed checker above to find the speed of any parkrun. On clicking the Speed Rank button it will show you the speed index of the parkrun you select. A parkrun name or rank number can be entered into the search box.
Parkrun Speed Index Examples
For example entering Hackney into the search box will return the result for Hackney Marshes parkrun. The same result can be achieved by entering 249 into the search as that is the ranking for that park run.
Fastest and Slowest UK Parkruns
The fastest current parkrun is Pegwell Bay which is a double out and back on the north side of Pegwell Bay and is run entirely along the dockside path. It can be found by entering 1 as the rank index in the parkrun search. The slowest parkrun is the Great Yarmouth North Beach parkrun which is two and a part lap clockwise and is all on sand/shingle. The type of surface definitely makes a big difference!
Related Parkrun Resources
parkrun Speed Index Explained
Using our parkrun speed check you can find out how fast a parkrun is compared to other parkruns. The search facility uses the latest list of 835 UK parkrun courses from fastest to slowest as featured in the updated Tim Grose YouTube video which details some of the mechanics behind the data set used. Tim is the man behind the data that runs the UK results and rankings sites the Power of 10 and runbritainrankings.com on behalf of UK Athletics.
The system uses that of RunBritain where the difficulty shown is the median (average) Standard Scratch Score (SSS) to 1 decimal place for each parkrun using data from 1 Jan 2023 to 25 January 2025. Tim indicates that the mean and median values are generally very similar. This implies a reasonably symmetrical distribution of values but if this were not the case using the median has that advantage of disregarding outliers better.
Surface condition can play a part in your parkrun time and as a guide here is the time that can be lost due to different surfaces :
- 0% Tarmac (essentially same as track)
- 1% lost on good firm trail
- 2% lost on grassy trail
- 3% lost on muddy cross country terrain
- 4% lost on Sand & Snow - very difficult to run fast on these surfaces!
