To have been really put off Parkrun by this

[rookiemere]

I'll start by saying I love parkrun. I've done over 130 of them and it's a real treat to discover a new one when we're away on holiday.

Everyone there is lovely and welcoming and it's such a great way to start Saturdays with a 5km run.

I am also older, fat and slow, but this is fine as I'm not there to win it.

So last Saturday headed to one of my usual parkruns with a friend. There was a traffic incident so many people didn't make it. This meant that rather than being in the back 10 or so I ended up being the last person bar the tail runner. Again all fine and someone has to be there.

However for the last km or so as I went past people who were dispersing made a big point of clapping loudly and shouting on encouragement. Obviously meant to be supportive, but I've run so many of the damn things and I just like to be invisible rather than the obviously last, slow ploddy person who people want to help.

I'm actually really nervous about going again, it upset me so much. I could go to one with more runners and then I should be less likely to be right at the back, but its a further drive and the whole thing has knocked my confidence and I don't know what to do.

Inclusive means the fast people as well as the slower people. If you just wanted to jog/walk round and have a chat, that's as valid as someone wanting to beat their personal best of 16 minutes. And all options inbetween. But not more valid.

parkrun started off as a time trial.

As for the records, the only gripe I have is that they use gender and not sex for them, which means that at least one parkrun's "female" course record is held by a male bodied person.

It's just a competitive race like any other and needs to stop pretending not to be

I don't disagree with that bit but (a) they can't call it a race because of UKA insurance because then it would have to meet all sorts of requirements that it can't and (b) as I said above, their sponsorship deals largely depend on it being a healthy leisure pursuit so it has to include walkers (and also makes a big thing of volunteering from a mental health perspective).

I assume there are no loos nearby? They always make a big thing of the parking when they set up parkrun but personally I think access to toilets is much more important!

If they do care they don't care in great enough numbers to have stopped parkrun's massive growth. And it's easy enough to do the run without having your name and time registered. As complaints about the setup go it's pretty feeble.

People on here have said they do care their times are published, and unless by some miracle we happen to be the only parkrunners who feel that way, it might be something that the PR organisers think about addressing - because the ways to avoid the times being published aren't v clear

Once again, parkrun started off as a time trial. It is a bit annoying when newer participants think it should be changed to suit them. If you don't want a time, don't get your barcode scanned. It's very easy to avoid. You can't get a time if you don't have a barcode, so that's all you have to say.

But it's very wrong for people to say that the results should be done away with, when that was the entire whole premise of parkrun. A free, weekly, TIMED 5k.

Inclusive means the fast people as well as the slower people. If you just wanted to jog/walk round and have a chat, that's as valid as someone wanting to beat their personal best of 16 minutes. And all options inbetween. But not more valid.

Absolutely this.

People could also do with remembering that inclusive doesn't mean compulsory.

Oh I'm with you on this one and as a formerly pretty fast competitive runner, I still empathise with you on this issue. I'll probably get shot for this on here, but all that inclusive, forced kindness, patronising clapping, etc really gets on my nerves. At the front end of the race (and as a fast woman, you can be pretty near the front end of the race in some park runs because some of them don't attract the top male runners) it is definitely very competitive. Many sprint finishes, usually against men. Its a race, not a fun event. I should imagine in the middle of the pack too. If completing it is just the challenge for you, it might not be competitive, but even then its human instinct to race others, and there are many people trying to finish in front of the runner who beat them last time. Thats one of the best ways to improve your time.

Oh and its really easy to avoid your time being published, faster runners do it all the time by pretending to forget their barcode, because no-one wants a time 2 minutes slower than their PB to come up on their PowerOfTen results...

But park runners, and runners in general can be strange creatures. Many park runners tend to be what I term "born again athletes" who tend to be evangelical about the merits of running. They preach at you even if you are quite an experienced athlete, and fail to notice your eyes glazing over. Worst of all are those patronising men who decide that because you're a woman, you need "encouragement", although it is fairly satisfying when you leave them in the dust.

For some reason at park run, I seem to get a lot of men who speak to me as if I'm a child. Its quite odd.

Overall, park run is good for training races or if you find a fast course to get a good PowerOfTen ranking. If you aren't performing on the day or are using it for a run out, just "forget" your barcode. Just ignore the happy clappy cheerers or use headphones.

Doingpettywellthanks But who gives a toss about others motivations? Just focus on your motivation

This. I mean, unless you are an Olympic level coach with gold medallists, its probably best not to tell other people how to run.

I know from this thread now that there are ways to avoid getting a time - but as I said in the last part of my post you quoted, it wasn’t made clear to us when we signed up or when we took part. Looking at their website, there’s nothing obvious on there to say ‘if you don’t want your details and times to be published here’s what you do on the day’, although I may have missed it. Their privacy policy says they don’t offer privacy settings and as such the website will display a bunch of information about you and your times.

Because if you see an event which you acknowledge appears to have a lot of people enjoying themselves, which inspires volunteers every week and makes use of public facilities and can only think of negative things to say about all participants, you must have a pretty shitty world view, and I pity that.

On a side note, parkrun participants always seem to outnumber other park users for the hour or so they are all congregating. When the larger number of users are all being social at the parkrun, it would seem to me that the people who don't want the parkrun are the ones being antisocial.

I will admit I'm largely motivated by improving my time. I have had to learn not to go for a time every week (because that way madness/injury lies) but having a free objectively timed thing is great for my motivation. GPS watches are ok but can be temperamental when there are lots of trees etc so it's nice to have the planned course to measure myself against.

Also, secretly (other than when my running mate is available) I use someone close to me coming into the last K as my competition, motivation to keep pushing to the end. So I use those around me to motivate a full on push to the finish. When it's my running mate it's a full on race at the end and we're open about it - in the course of racing each other we might well overtake a few people on the final stretch (before the funnel of course) because we're both more sprinters than distance runners...

It's been so interesting reading all the comments on this thread. It's definitely confirmed my suspicion that Parkrun's not for me!

Locations: 768
Finishers: 2,662,321
Finishes: 41,916,619
All-time events: 206,919
Volunteers: 368,081
PBs: 6,777,409
Average finish time: 00:29:00
Average finishes per participant: 15.7
Groups: 7,585

from the park run website.

it would look like a heck of a lot of people do enjoy park runs. I love that volunteer figure in particular

This is sad.
Do you have an idea what you will do instead?

Where do they make a big deal out of the fastest runners? I haven't seen that. What I see is the founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, celebrating the fact that the average finish time is getting slower every year as more and more people like me (slow, old, unfit, overweight) take part as well as the people who do marathons and train with clubs. Once in a blue moon I might see a parkrun tweet that celebrates a particularly good time somewhere round the country, but mostly what I see is celebration of a record turnout, signposting a new event, anniversary of the first event, people reaching a milestone number of runs or volunteering stints, people overcoming health problems etc etc.

I’m not sure about a ‘big deal’ but the average finish time, female record, male record and average graded record is on the home page of every park run website.

Exactly. You get the choice as to whether your time is published as yours, and of course you get the choice as to whether to even look at the results. Why does this not answer your concerns Phos?

Also, I have never seen a fuss made of the fastest runners. What sort of thing are you talking about?

@Doingprettywellthanks I'll just carry on as I am, running with my daughter in various local parks (including the one where the Parkrun is, just avoiding Saturday mornings!)

Not really sad at all. I'm quite a private, bookish, unsporty person (as is my daughter) so it suits us better to run on our own, to our own schedule, without the hoopla of a communal event.

Just checked the website of our local Parkrun and saw all the rankings and photo gallery...great for those who enjoy it but nope, not for me.

I’m not sure about a ‘big deal’ but the average finish time, female record, male record and average graded record is on the home page of every park run website

I do think they get the balance about right though, because every person's results listing also highlights any milestones they've reached, and you get your (v)25/50/100/250/500 parkrun milestones regardless of speed or performance. I've also only ever heard the Run Director announcing individuals reaching milestones during the briefings; I've never heard a PB or performance time be mentioned (except once when a new course record was set at juniors, and the RD did acknowledge that they wouldnt normally do this).

parkrun are quite clear that participation rather than performance is rewarded: a 100 parkrun milestone is worth the same whether you run 100 different events all at sub-20, or whether you walk the same event 100 times. I think they do manage to be 'something for everyone', but as this thread shows you can't please all of the people all of the time.

I think that maybe it's not made obvious on the website how to avoid your result being published because it is assumed that by visiting the website you're interested in being part of parkrun, which is a timed run which publishes its results.

I've been to parkruns in the past where there's been a technical issue and the results are delayed /published incorrectly and the organisers work really hard to rectify it because its important to alot of participants.
I follow the Facebook page of my local parkrun and the posts are about how many people turned up , how many got a PB, who was celebrating their milestones, the weather, special events of any regulars. But I would need to visit the parkrun website to look up who came first/what their time was

@QueenWatevraWaNabi this is on every course’s website homepage, not in a participants area.

This is why I couldn't get on with Parkrun!

Yes, the intention is lovely, that everyone supports those at the back, but it also means that the person struggling the most comes under an absolute microscope towards the end of the run.

I wasn't the slowest when I went, but I was on of the slower runners, and it made me so self-conscious that all of the faster runners, who were already finished, essentially hung around to patronise me (I know that's not what they really were doing, but that's how it felt to me at the time).

As for the records, the only gripe I have is that they use gender and not sex for them, which means that at least one parkrun's "female" course record is held by a male bodied person.

Oh really? That's hardly fair.

Don't most people have their barcodes on their phones now? Just picking up on a previous point.

I know - and a lot of us like to see those statistics. But you have to go looking for them: they're not announced every week during the briefing and there aren't tshirts for winning to identify who those people are. As I said, I think they get the balance right.

I don't think you have to go looking for them - I just typed in Parkrun Edinburgh, then looked at the different sites eg for Portobello, Holyrood, Oriam, and read down the page of each. Each site also says "A free, fun, and friendly weekly 5k community event. Walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate – it's up to you!...we all take part for our own enjoyment. Please come along and join in whatever your pace!" - so if that's the premise, why highlight the course records (which seem to be from years ago)?