Didcot man completes 500 park runs - 2nd youngest to do it

Kieran Beech, 25, completed his 500th 5km run on Saturday, November 26 at University parks where he is volunteer coordinator.

He has been park running in Oxfordshire since July 2011, when he was just 14. He has since completed park runs in 112 different locations, including in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Poland and the USA.

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He's also volunteered at park runs 183 times in total and was the first person in Oxfordshire to be awarded a milestone t-shirt, receiving his 10th t-shirt at Abingdon in November 2011 back when t-shirts were sent to a park runner’s home event.

Mr Beech first got into running when he was taken to an Abingdon parkrun by his older brother Josh.

He was an ‘instant convert’ and quickly became a fresh-faced Abingdon regular before moving to the new Didcot’s parkrun in 2015.

Mr Beech has since become the event director of Florence Park junior parkrun in Cowley.

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Amy Rose O’Hanlon, event director from University Parks, said: “Needless to say, we will be making quite a fuss of Kieran, in part on account of his impressive parkrun feat, but also, and if anything rather more so, because we reckon Kieran's pretty special and we owe a huge amount to him for everything he does both for our event and the wider parkrun community.”

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Read more from this author

This story was written by Gee Harland. She joined the team in 2022 as a senior multimedia reporter.

Gee covers Wallingford, Wantage and Didcot.

Get in touch with her by emailing: Gee.harland@newsquest.co.uk

Follow her on Twitter @Geeharland

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