Christchurch, the city of runners

Saturday, 3 August 2024

Running is booming across the country - and Christchurch is a city of runners.

Christchurch is a city that loves to run.

One in 10 Christchurch residents have finished a 5km parkrun this year - with the regular Saturday event seeing a doubling in numbers. The Christchurch Marathon has also enjoyed the largest number of participants in a decade and amateur running clubs that started “accidentally” have surged in members.

It’s undisputed that the country is experiencing a running boom right now, but pavements in Ōtautahi in particular are taking a pounding.

Those in the know say young women make up the fastest growing running community. The appeal to exercise and socialise at the same time has seen female run club’s soar in popularity.

“We kill so many birds with one stone,” said Ellen Petersen, co-founder of Christchurch run group Mums2Marathon.

Since starting Mums2Marathon in 2022, Ellen Petersen and Philly McMeekan have noticed a surge in running interest.

Petersen and her friend Philly McMeekan, both mothers of two, started an Instagram page to document their training journey for the Queenstown Marathon in 2022 to not “annoy” their friends with running updates on their personal pages.

But it gained a following and other women wanted to join them on training runs.

Now the pair have more than 1000 followers online and hold monthly group runs at different locations with 15 to 40 other runners with different skill or pace abilities.

Founders of running group Mums2Marathon Philly McMeekan and Ellen Petersen run at dawn at Roto Kohatu Reserve in Christchurch.

Their last “big” event around Mother’s Day had 100 runners.

“It just kind of happened accidentally,” Petersen said.

“They might not know anyone when they come along to a Mums2Marathon run, but then when they leave, they feel more confident… they've made more connections.”

The Adventure Women of Further Faster trail running group during a group run in Christchurch.

Trail running group Adventure Women of Further Faster experienced a similar surge too. It was started unintentionally five years ago by a group of friends training for a local race.

“The ladies in the group said it was so fun and can we keep going, so we started meeting fortnightly since then,” said group organiser Jen Lamont.

Rain or shine, regardless of gale force winds, as seen earlier this week, between a dozen to 30 women routinely show up each fortnight.

Hagley parkrun in Christchurch has double the number of runners now that it did a year ago.

“It’s a connection thing, a lot of people have found friends through this group… not everyone has someone that they can run with,” said Lamont.

Parkruns are a global phenomenon, held at 8am every Saturday at locations around the world. They are free, social 5km events where runners and walkers of all abilities are welcome.

In 2023, the Hagley parkrun became the first New Zealand to have 100,000 finishers.

In Christchurch, a remarkable 37,000 people have completed a 5km just this year (a 51% increase on this time last year). This is significantly more than the 23,000 runners in Wellington (though this is also up 41% on last year) while 14,000 have taken part in Hamilton (up 34%), according to parkrun New Zealand.

The only city with more park runners is Auckland (43,000) but that equates to about 2% of the city’s population compared to the nearly 10% of Christchurch’s.

More than 5200 people took part in the full or half marathon, 10km or Kids Marafun races at the 2024 Christchurch Marathon — the most entrants in more than a decade.

There are now three parkruns in the city: Hagley Park, Broad Park, at Waimairi Beach, and Scarborough.

In the wider region there are parkruns in Rolleston, Pegasus, and a new location starting in Ashburton on Saturday marking the 50th parkrun location in New Zealand.

“In our busiest weeks we now get 800 walkers and runners – double what we had a year ago,” Hagley parkrun co-director Richard Malloch said.

Philly McMeekan (left) and Ellen Petersen combine socialising and catching up for a coffee with exercising to save time in their busy lives - something that resonated with lots of other women.

The number of runners taking on the city’s marathon continues to grow too.

“We had 5285 people participating in the 2024 event – nearly 1100 more than in 2023,” said marathon director Chris Cox. It was the most entrants in more than a decade.

Running is booming across the country and Christchurch is a city of runners.

“Next year our goal is to have 6500 participants and judging by the growing popularity of running we’re confident of getting there.”

Both events have seen huge uptakes in young adult registrations, particularly women.

Cox said women under 25 were the fastest growing community on fitness app Strava, and half of the 18 to 29-year-old runners at this year’s event were women.

“Traditionally we’ve had far more men than women enter and we're loving the fact that we’re getting much more representative of our community,” he said.

It was no surprise to media personality and long-time running advocate Brodie Kane that Christchurch’s running scene was humming. Her favourite running spots “in the entire world” were Hagley Park and the Port Hills.

She recognised the running surge and started Solo Girls Run Club in Christchurch and Auckland in April for women to join weekly runs so they didn’t have to do it alone.

“You can turn up and not know anyone and it doesn’t matter how fast your pace, this is more about us doing it together, and unfortunately the sad reality is women often don’t feel safe running alone.”

Kane said “you can’t beat the feeling after” a group session. The companionship and community created were its popularity’s driving factors.

Registrations for next year’s Christchurch Marathon in April opened online this week.

The 2024 marathon pumped around $1.4 million into the local economy. Earlier in July, the Christchurch City Council voted to allocate $105,000 to support the event over the next three years.