Wanaka Station Park, Homestead Close, Wanaka 9305.
Type of Course – Out and back
Shoes Required – Road
Things to Know
Toilets are located in the park. There are shower and changing facilities nearby. Free parking, motorhome parking available at Homestead Close and Stoney Creek car park (not overnight).
Note 9am start in New Zealand Standard Time (winter).
Forgotten your barcode? Email the RD to print for you.
Showers at Ballantyne Road Service Hub
Not permanently marked.
Low risk of cancellation
Cafe: Wineglass Café, Edgewater Resort, 54 Sargood Rd, Wanaka.
Location of start:
The event starts in Wanaka Station Park.
Getting there by public transport
There is no public transport available for this parkrun.
Getting there on foot
From Wanaka town centre, walk out of town towards Glendhu Bay on the lakefront path. After the wooden footbridge take the steps up to the left in to Wanaka Station Park.
Getting there by road
From Wanaka town centre, drive out of town towards Glendhu Bay on Wanaka/Mt Aspiring Rd. Turn right on to Homestead Cl.
Turn right into the car park. The start line is located through the pedestrian gate.
Very limited parking at the start/finish line, park nearby.
Stats
First run: February 24, 2018
Inaugural attendance: 109
Record attendance: 134 (28/12/2019)
Course records
Women: Olivia Burne 17:36 (14/07/2018)
Men: Janus Staufenberg 16:07 (25/08/2018)
The Story Behind Wanaka parkrun…
Adam Sharman, event director
My wife Jane is from Balclutha, but she used to come to Wanaka for holidays.
We met in Australia and when we moved to New Zealand we moved to Auckland and ran at Cornwall Park, this was it’s 20th event back in 2012.
We had spent 18 months in Europe and had come across parkrun there but I hadn’t run one.
By the time we arrived in New Zealand Lower Hutt had started, then Cornwall. We were four years in Auckland. (Adam has run more than 100 times at Cornwall)
Then we moved to Wanaka and as soon as we knew we were going to move we thought about setting it up.
That was November 2016 and in February 2018 we started.
We wanted to show off the place as much as possible so we wanted to hold it on the lakefront.
We looked at a few different options but we wanted to start in a park.
In town it’s beautiful but Wanaka Station Park is a very under used reserved and not many people know it exists.
We thought it needed to be used more. It’s also great for parking.
There’s a nice natural tunnel of willow trees that changes through the seasons.
From there you can go to the lakefront. We go by the famous Wanaka tree then along the lakefront.
For some reason people forget that if you run downhill you have to run back up it on the way back.
It really is beautiful, it’s a good honest course as well. The hill is only for 60-70 metres but the lakefront course is all off road.
There’s some undulation in there. People think it’s a fast course but it’s not, it’s a strong course.
The beauty is amazing.
I always think of parkrun as the world’s most positive cult. Everyone is always friendly, the attitude is always positive.
The community involvement as well, you get the high school cross country team doing time trials and other groups coming along. One of the GPs has started prescribing it because of the health benefit.
I love the fact that it’s not competitive but only as much as you want it to be. It’s very good to see your own improvement and have your own race with the people around you.
I love the ethos behind it; the average finishing times getting lower and that’s a positive thing because that means participation is going up.
You can go anywhere in the world if you look hard enough you can find one and it will feel just like you’re home.
We get a lot of visitors, in the summer it can be 60-70%.