Reality Rules Parkrun Launch 3 October 2026

Ultimately, it is meaningless … to you.

To others, it is not meaningless at all.

There are plenty of competitive running clubs around awaiting your application.

If a man wishes to compete against women competitively then competitive running clubs are the place for him.

If anyone wishes to run competitively, they are the appropriate clubs for them; don't need to exclude women...

If anyone wishes to run competitively, they are the appropriate clubs for them; don't need to exclude women...

There are plenty of competitive running clubs around awaiting your application.

There comes a point for all runners when they're going to become slower so by 'competing against themselves' they're sure to lose. I took up running 20 years ago aged 40, I'm slower now than I was 15 years ago but I'm fast for a 60 year old woman.

Results based on age and sex enable me to compare myself to runners the same sex and age as me. A man running in the women's category ruins that.

There are plenty of competitive running clubs around awaiting your application.

Like the clubs that the Parkrun founders were members of when they set up a time trial for fellow club members?

If they wanted to drop the competitive time trial aspect they are free to do that, but they obviously understand that participants value it. I don't think their policies have anything to do with inclusion - it's just that creating sex categories is a hassle and lack of sex categories has little negative impact on competitive men.

The guy who set up parkrun was coming back from injury and was suffering from depression so he set up a fun run to meet up with his friends who were competing in races. It was set up to be for a fun get together and for mental health reasons.

It seems obvious to parkrun has an identity crisis and needs to pick a lane.

Either it's non competitive fun run- in which case participants receive only their own timed result, plus whatever points towards the various challenges. No rankings, no 'first finisher'.

Or it's a lightly competitive run with fair rankings and an expectation of honesty and integrity from its participants.

It cannot be a competitive run with rankings for men, and a fun run where rankings don't matter for women.

I suspect they're terrified of removing rankings completely as they know how many men actually do care about them, despite shouting at women that they don't matter at all.

So they are stuck, but only because of their intrinsic sexism. They are truggling to find a fair way for women that won't upset men, and they consider these two things to be equal priorities.

Defending parkrun’s decision is like saying women should ignore sex discrimination against them for a good cause.

Every argument I have seen so far has supported sex discrimination for a good cause. But apparently feminists are the problem.

The guy who set up parkrun was coming back from injury and was suffering from depression so he set up a fun run to meet up with his friends who were competing in races. It was set up to be for a fun get together and for mental health reasons.

There was a American TRA being interviewed on a show saying he’d be happy for his daughter to lose to a TIM in sports because she already had so much privilege and it’s not a big deal if she loses. Wonder if his daughter feels the same way…l

There was a American TRA being interviewed on a show saying he’d be happy for his daughter to lose to a TIM in sports because she already had so much privilege and it’s not a big deal if she loses. Wonder if his daughter feels the same way…l

Wonder where he stands on women who identify as trans competing?

They have the choice of not being competitive against men or forgoing treatment and competing as women, but people have different expectations of them for some reason…

Firstly, the way they've written this makes it sound like this is happening at every parkrun across the land. I'd like to see their stats on how often this if happening, or suspected to be happening, because in all my years of being a parkrunner, Run Director, touring many different events, and being on a number of different parkrun social forums I have only heard of one individual being reported for this so it definitely isn't impacting many people's weekly parkrun results. parkrun scrapped the stats of things like course records and male/female first finishers a while back (although they're still there if you know how to find them).
When you register there's the option to select from male/female/another gender identity/prefer not to day. Now I guess that trans people should be picking "another gender identity" but if they identify as male or female then that's probably what they're going to select.
Also, the majority of people won't actually know or care if their gender position is one place lower than it should rightfully be and given the inaccuracies in some results it might not be 100% anyway. People can also lie about their age should they wish to.
Ultimately, it's a volunteer led event, there's no prize money for "winning" (technically it's a run not a race) and you can register under any persona without being verified or run without being registered.
Yes, i agree that the female category should have females being compared equally against each other, but it's parkrun not the fucking Olympics or even a paid for race!!

It’s so annoying that they can’t see that sex and gender are not the same. I register my sex under their banner for gender and they think that is tolerable and creates a loophole . I think anyone who thinks that is either stupid or likes porn with men with boobs and watches it far too much.