Parkrunners! Parkrun survey

Agree. If it was stipulated that people can only register correct sex and age group and if questions are raised there would be some sort of process followed to confirm correct sex. In saying that, you would hope it would then be only very rarely reported because people did the right thing.

However, it is wholly voluntary as to what people register as. This is where the whole detached from reality kicks in. Reporting any ranking, but especially event ranking, keeps the competitive element alive despite parkruns claims of ‘fun run and being non-competitive’. And this will impact fast runners more than others, of course. If you are not in the upper ranking you probably do dismiss the rankings as not important to you.

People can choose the category they run in. If parkrun said "you must run in the category of your sex at birth or choose "prefer not to say" or "another gender identity"" that would be ok.

But they don't. The choice is there but there's no "nudge". They don't care if a trans woman runs in the female category.

The only thing they did change was that if a male runner changed their category having done lots of parkruns, it would only count for future parkruns. Before that, it was a retrospective change which was even more ridiculous.

So for example, the longest standing parkrunner has run over 900 parkruns and has run 17/18 minutes when he was younger. That's a brilliant time for a man, but an elite level time for a woman. If he decided this week that he was going to be known as Daisy in future, all of his times would have been changed to the female category going back years. They have at least changed that so only Daisy's future runs would count as female. But of course, they shouldn't go in the female category at all.

This is also what I am confused about! I have asked about how women feel their 'needs' are compromised by the current situation because I am genuinely interested, but haven't really seen a solid reasoning for this, which I am completely open to, despite being accused of being dismissive.

@Zestylemo Apologies for making you wait, I was spending time with my family and there was a medical emergency, so I prioritised that.

I believe someone has answered you already about the reason for this but, if you would still also appreciate my viewpoint, it's because it started as time trials and people do, in general, like to compare their rankings to others of the same biological sex. For example, knowing that I came 40th overall but was the 9th female might give me a better sense of achievement. Of course, it's difficult to deduce very much from this in reality, because Parkrun no longer tells me the total number of female runners so, 9th out of 100 would be impressive, 9th out of 10, less so. Then there are all the anomalies that affect ranking: how many people run on that particular day; how this compares week by week and location by location; and how many people cheated by either cutting corners, entering the incorrect age, or entering as the incorrect sex (which, I assume is the one you feel most concerned about). In order to try and combat this, parkrun offers two additional categories to entrants: 'prefer not to say' and 'another gender indentity'. As it's a community event run entirely by volunteers, we all hope people will be honest when entering as this helps fairness for all. As with all things in life, sadly, sometimes people are not. There are certain acts of dishonesty that make me really angry but, personally, I am happy to factor in that there may be the odd issue with this fun run but, on balance, the positives outweigh the negatives and both time and age grading are more useful statistics for determining individual progress anyway.

But as we’ve already established, there are 2 other categories trans people can run in - “prefer not to say” and “another gender identity”.

I’m genuinely confused- is your issue that they say “gender” and not “sex”? Or that they don’t police it effectively, allowing people to self-select their category?

Because the parkrun organisers seem to exist in an alternate reality remember. They declare the event is not in anyway competitive, ‘just a bit of fun’ while still publishing event specific rankings. The ones that people don’t want to get rid of, but declare are meaningless really.

And because to those organisers, male people can be female people. Because the only people it negatively affects are female people, so it is like ‘why bother’?

I cannot imagine being a girl at the moment trying to navigate this. My child’s schools here in the UK did not have any focus on athletics training which I found unusual being completely new to the UK school system. So, therefore if your child was interested they have to do athletics more as an out of school activity. Parkrun is part of this offering. Yet its inconsistency in declaring it is ‘fully inclusive’ while actively allowing male people to displace female people in the rankings will discourage girls from the start. It devalues their efforts.

And despite some people’s opinion that we have seen in media and on threads, we know from at least 7 years old that male children have physical advantage over female children. Each year another study shows this. So far we have the Australian and the Greek comprehensive school children studies and at least one US study. The Australian school system have a significant focus on athletics in primary and secondary school hence that data was available to analyse.

And we know also, directly from listening to girls, that they don’t like to lose the recognition for their efforts by not being recognised as a separate sex category. Yet parkrun have prioritised male athletes over female athletes while hypocritically declaring they are ‘fully inclusive’ while publishing sex based rankings.

The messaging is at odds with the reality. I get a similar feeling reading threads where parents are telling their daughters that it is ok that only the boys in that race get recognition for that race because it was mixed sex with only the first three being awarded and that it is only ‘a run, only a bit of fun, stop being so competitive’. When it is because some parents believe there is no difference between male and female bodies generally before puberty. Because some outstandingly talented girls will beat some mediocre boys from those parents experience. So based on that and ignoring the studies, parents tell their girls to just accept not being recognised equally. To accept inequity. This messaging does directly feed into whether girls will continue in sport or not, and I believe parkrun are contributing to this if they allow boys to register as girls.

But Park run do have male bodied people competing against female bodied people so I wonder why the people at park run bother to categorise by sex? it's odd to categorise by something that doesn't exist in their view.

I agree.

plus, it's the thin end of the edge.
If a man can run in the women's category at these events, it normalises it. Nothing to see here.

"I can run as a woman at Parkrun so I'll do that elsewhere"...

Because it started off as a time trial and you don't have male bodied people competing against female bodied people or mixed sex categories.

@TofuTart
So what's the reasoning to categorise male and female then?

We are, but as already discussed on this thread, grass roots sport also matters. If young girls are beaten by people who should be competing as boys, they'll give up.

Girls already give up sport.

So it does matter. parkrun is a well known and important route into elite and lifelong sport.

@Mangoandbroccoli
I'll be waiting for Mangoandbroccoli to explain the reasoning for bothering to put the categories into male and female.
Waiting for the reason........

Thanks. And thanks to others too.

Helleofabore

The prefer not to say option works well. We have a trans girl (under 10) at my local JPR.
They have their results listed but don’t affect the rankings by sex.

*Zestylemo *

because despite what some people on here try to push people like to see their positions. I’ve been to about 200 park runs (including juniors) and only twice have I ever seen a female win so they put the runners position in their need category on the results so women can see if they were the fastest women. (Except they can’t necessarily now because some bloke may have decided he’s a woman and run in the female category)

Competitive runner here - was a very early adopter of parkrun back in 2007 when it was the Bushy park time trial. Have since run and volunteered most years but sad to say I don't bother with it any more after their nonsense about refusing to protect the female category and then doubling down and removing course records and things like the sub 20 list. I find it annoying that the results feed through and affect things like your runbritain handicap which otherwise consists of UKA licensed events where the category is protected. I wish they would remove parkrun from runbritain rankings or at least amend the algorithm so parkrun doesn't count for your national ranking (which i do care about because I am trying to improve it)

Luckily for me there are loads of licensed RunThrough events near me so I have shelled out on a season pass and switched to doing those. Not an option for most people though due to cost / access issues especially if you live more rurally.

@Mangoandbroccoli

I'm confused, why does park run log females and males as categories? What's the reasoning?

I personally prefer to see where I come against other female runners and of course in any race there are different number of runners each week just like in any race anywhere - Saying that is like saying why rank any race anywhere as there are different numbers of runners so the rankings don’t matter. I want a single sex female category. Just one male runner in the female category affects where other females will place. It’s simply not fair as they are male.

I agree with others and we either have no results or accurate results. I agree that ParkRun shouldn’t be included in Run England rankings although my husband held the national ParkRun record one year but he was a doing well nationally at all distances at that time and just entered ParkRun with our daughters.

To the person who said I must be running in England Athletics events if I’m top 10% of all female runners. I don’t and don’t want to anymore. I used to about 20 years ago when I was a member of a running club and ran more than I do now but now I just run for fun but I do like to weirdly see where I come against other runners and I don’t like the female category being mixed sex. Yes ParkRun is great for all kinds of reasons and I wouldn’t mind if all placings and rankings disappeared and we just got a time. I just think it’s crazy as it is at the moment with the female category being mixed sex.

@TiredEyesSoreHeart
*"You state you personally hadn't come across a trans runner.

MANY others have. And they felt cheated. Perhaps if you had their experience, you would feel compromised."*

I don't understand how I would feel compromised, though? They wouldn't affect my time, because that's personal to each individual runner; they wouldn't affect the age grading because that's not how it works; and they wouldn't affect my ranking any more than it is affected by how many people happen to run on the day.

I barely ever look at the ranking- the number of park runners differs wildly every week!

That's a good point - there could be say 30 female runners one week, and 60 the week after.
It varies wildly week to week.
Comparing your times to other runners to "see if you're getting better" or "are the fastest" seems a bit futile as you're not going to know as the amount will be different to last weeks!

But we're not talking about sport in general, we're discussing, very specifically, Parkrun

Exactly

You state you personally hadn't come across a trans runner.

MANY others have. And they felt cheated. Perhaps if you had their experience, you would feel compromised.

Thank you

hell yes. It's on some results. I checked to make sure the first actual female was listed as first female and they are. The neutral runner just has their position in the race, they aren't taking a women's place. Although there was a hoo-haa for it to finally get to this fairer stage.

Even using it as a verb was you dismissing other people's opinions. You have engaged with me because I have continued to post. Others have stated their opinions which were just as dismissed by your using the word.