Canberra parkrun participant Ken Gibson has achieved a “national” milestone: 100 wins!

Ken is believed to be the first person to achieve this milestone in Australia and Canberra.

“I’m calling it a ‘national record with a disclaimer’ because we just don’t know,” Ken said.

“I’m 42, I enjoy it. It is also a very social occasion, but I still have that competitive streak.”

Parkrun is a free community event where anyone can walk, jog or run 5 kilometres, volunteer or spectate on Saturday mornings.

Ken is part of the Burley Griffin parkrun group at Weston Park.

He reached 100 first finishes in late-January with an average time of 16 minutes 17 seconds per session.

Ken took up parkrun in 2016 but started this challenge in 2022.

“Surprisingly because I’d been so consistent for so many weeks, and now years, it was a nice relief to get done,” he said.

“It was just a personal challenge, but others got invested in it as well.”

Ken celebrated the milestone with a family dinner.

He set the goal after his father, who lived in Wollongong, died in 2024 from a tumour – at the time, Ken was at the about 70-win mark.

Discussing Ken’s parkrun statistics was something the father and son did every few weeks.

“He was very in tune with data and keeping statistics,” Ken said.

“He was a golfer and anyone that knows a golfer knows that they analyse things quite a bit.

“So, it was just a nice little thing that I’d do.”

Ken said his father would also check in on how his parkrun mates were going with their runs.

Ken’s next goals are to run the 5km in 15 minutes and 30 seconds and break the two minutes mark for 800 metres.

“I know that as I get older I will probably slow down, so that’s why you put yourself into these positions to have these goals and try to achieve these things,” he said.

Ken has competed in several marathons including Sydney, Queenstown, and New York.

“I’d love to London, Berlin, Chicago, Boston, and Tokyo,” he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic you may have seen Ken running around during the lockdowns as he aimed to run in every suburb in the ACT (that existed at the time).

“It was funny because I was on top of Mount Ainslie and I remember looking down from the viewing area and because you’re on top of Mt Ainslie, I wanted to know how many suburbs there might be,” Ken said.

“I just got curious and figured out that surely there’s an A-Z list of every suburb.

“So that sort of got the interest before we all got locked down.”

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