Shortly after Keith Parks crossed the finish line at the Royal Victoria Marathon on Sunday, his daughter hopped over the fence with novelty cowbells to congratulate her father for his 200th marathon completion.
Keith Parks, 63, who runs with the Marathon Maniacs runners club, happily acknowledges that he named his daughter Victoria, now 17, after the first-ever marathon he ran 25 years ago.
When it was time to name his newborn daughter, there was only one choice on his list, he said. “My wife had 80 and it came down to mine.”
The South Surrey man was inspired to trade in his soccer cleats for running shoes in 1998, with the Victoria Royal Marathon as his first race.
A combination of factors, including household moves and the death of family members meant that Parks’ second marathon race didn’t happen until six years later in 2004.
“Sometimes in life, plans don’t come out immediately, but you eventually attain them,” he said.
He has squeezed in 198 other marathon races since then.
”I’ve got a whole closet full of laundry and jewelry,” he said, referring to the runner’s slang for race competition shirts and medals.
“I come from a family where I have bad genetics, so I’m doing everything I can to ward off all those bad medical things that can happen,” said Parks, who had previously worked as a paramedic for 40 years.
Bart Sutherland, pace leader coordinator for the Royal Victoria Marathon, made sure that Parks would be wearing race number 200 on Sunday while leading the 3 hour and 50 minute pacer group.
“We’re basically helping people fulfill their goals,” he said his marathon pacer group, the Super Pacers. “People that are running with us don’t have to do the mental math, they just have to enjoy the race and enjoy the sights, while we do all the hard work for them and scoot them across the finish ahead of us.”
Parks commended his fellow racers, though a good chunk of his runners left him with 10 kilometres left to go. “My group was super excellent, I had a good fun group.”
Prior to Sunday’s Royal Victoria Marathon, Parks ran 22 other marathons in 2023.
Running has made him realize that the words “no, can’t, or cannot” can always be overcome, he said.
With 200 marathons under his belt, Keith is setting his sights on a new target.
It will be his 20th consecutive Boston Marathon in April. He’s hoping to break in the exclusive quarter-century club of the Boston Marathon in a few years, which has just around 100 members that can claim to have finished the famed marathon more than 25 times.
His daughter, an ice dancer, admits that she has yet to run a marathon.
“I feel like some point now, I’m going to have to run it because I was literally born to do it,” Victoria Parks said. “Maybe one day I’ll get to do it with my dad.”
“I’m dreaming for that day,” her father said immediately.
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