ParkRun and Transgender record breaker

[PennysLane]

Trans runner (M to F) has smashed a woman’s record. Turns out he’s an attempted murderer too.

He attempted to murder the HR Manager of U.K. Athletics after he investigated his eligibility to compete as a woman. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Jeska )

I have enjoyed Parkrun on several occasions with my children, I’ll not be doing it again until they get this sorted. If at all.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/22/parkrun-self-id-male-runners-smash-womens-records/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/23/transgender-murder-parkrun/

I think this has become a story now because another transwoman set a course record at a different parkrun last weekend

They do have categories. They publish statistics based on your age and sex and time, and your position overall, position in your sex category, and position in your age and sex category an hour after the event.

These are categories. They have categories. They've just decided that the one category that they should have a policy supporting cheating is the one which only disadvantages women.

For fucks sake, why do people keep wittering on about "inspecting genitalia"? It's so twatty.
We all KNOW a man when we see one. If your course record was broken by a man in the womens category, you'd know it. They wouldn't be a lady.

Try to see the bigger picture here. We're not talking about a wafty fun jog in the park.

They should change it back to a fun run then

For fucks sake, why do people keep wittering on about "inspecting genitalia"? It's so twatty.

It's right out of the TRA playbook.

It’s classic outrage politics, a purity spiral in action.

Thank you! If I was running and saw a TW beat my time I would absolutely challenge them over what sex they entered under. And report to the volunteers. Or maybe they could campaign for their own version of Parkrun called Theyrun or something.

I am so tired. Women are so tired of all this.

We don't interrogate any of the hundreds of people who come to run with us each week, it's just a way to encourage people to exercise and enjoy themselves in the park!
Good to hear, thanks- I like park run because of the fact it's open to all abilities, all people, who just want to get out into the fresh air and hopefully get a bit fitter
There's no pressure, it's all just friendly

That's what I thought but this whole thing has put me off going if it's treated like a race

I am so tired. Women are so tired of all this.
Speak for yourself. You don't speak for all women.

A woman has the woman's UK parkrun record anyway. Melissa Courtney Bryant in 15 minutes something. Not sure what all the fuss is about other than Jeska is clearly very disturbed.

@ImNotAsThinkAsYouDrunkIAm after I posted I thought I'm not sure how I would expect the situation to be resolved - I would hate to put the Race Director/volunteer in a confrontational situation.
There was once a mix up at parkrun with the tokens and I was given token 1 eg first place. I realised the error and flagged it but my result email came that I'd come 1st place and set a new female record! I felt terrible for denying the person that came first their 'victory' and for the genuine female record holder who was way faster than I'll ever be. The results were sorted and the correct order was published. It was a lot of hard work for the volunteers sorting out the results . I suppose they rely on "honesty " which seems to have blurred lines when it comes to this issue.

This would be ok. I don’t mind if the other categories are open/ male or whatever but just have a clear female sex category at registration.

Volunteers are not part of it. They can just do as they do now

But it's not a race even if someone chooses to wrongly believe it is in some effort to massage their own ego.

To agree with some of the posters, Park run shouldn't have any records at all. All it does is perpetuate some people's belief it's a race.

I say this as someone who has had the fastest time on a given week (multiple times) in a park run (notice I'm not saying I won or came first because it's NOT A RACE).

I think the organisers of a parkrun event would know if a transwoman broke the woman's course record.

Transmen usually pass pretty well.

Transwomen don't.

No need to ask for evidence, it's usually blindingly obvious.

It doesn't solve the week to week issue of being knocked down the list of female finishers but it would at least mean that the record would not stand (until they changed their rules about canicross leads it a record would also not stand if they knew you'd run with a dog).

However, parkrun could offer a non-binary category and invite transwomen to register in it. It wouldn't 100% solve the issue as some transwomen would just decide they were going to register female regardless.

no, thanks, i was happy with the answer but i now have a supplementary question. As i understand it there must be liaiason with parks management? there are also t-shirts for 50, 100 etc parkruns, how are they organised (all by the volunteers?) there's a logo - i assume there is some kind of oversight about how and when it is used?

I'm just interested in the structure from someone who knows it, so i can work it out in my head what i think. If it is all just more-or-less ad hoc runs in the park with some volunteers who run a stopwatch and mark down times, I'm fine with that. But the publishing of results/categories on a website suggests a bit more of an organisation to me. I just wondered, idly really, how it all functions.

(I find it fascinating and kind of wish there was one close to me, I'd probably enjoy it now I'm over being horribly competitive about running)

Don't be put off, it honestly isn't treated like a race despite what it might seem like on here!
I've been to a few different ones, and yes you'll get some who race round and always finish the course in under 20 mins every week, but you'll get them everywhere and that's up to them , but there's lots of people going aT different paces too.
I'm usually jogging along somewhere near the back when I go, I'm just interested in finishing the course in one piece and hopefully bettering my last weeks score by a few seconds or minutes!
You're never usually so called "last" anyway as there's what's called tail walkers /runners who walk /jog at the back to either help out or encourage along, walk jog with you or leave you alone if that's more your thing and don't want to chat/company

god all this talk, i really miss running (i have knees that don't like running any more)

@Brefugee - parkrun all started when the founder organised a 5km time trial at Bushy Park for some friends and club-mates when he was injured, and he still wanted to be involved with running. That became a regular thing, and then some other events were set up as off-shoots, but parkrun has moved on a lot since then. It isn't a race, it's just "a run" or even a walk - they actively want to set up new events in areas where people wouldn't think to take part in an organised physical event. They've changed things like the "tail runner" to the "tail walker", and celebrate that the average finish time is getting slower as it means there's more people walking or walk-running rather than speedy club runners!

But yes there is a central organising HQ with a small number of paid employees, however all the actual runs are put on by volunteers. If you want to start a parkrun, you map out a plan and then contact HQ who help you with liaising with land owners and signing off risk assessments and things like that. But you need a dozen "core team" volunteers to be the event directors and run directors who cart the kit (hi-viz, cones, tape and posts to make a finish funnel, megaphone!) around each week, manage the volunteer marshals, process the results so people get their times, deal with any incidents like injured runners or complaints or sorting things out if there's another event on in the park so you have to cancel one week. We sort it all out week-in, week-out, we only contact HQ to renew the risk assessment each year and if they need to follow up on a serious incident like someone getting injured during the run.

The HQ side of things arrange sponsors from companies who help to fund things like the website that hosts parkrun event details and means you get your results emailed to you, they promote parkrun as a brand. Which is all over the world - you can go and do a parkrun in Australia or South Africa! And yes you can pay for a t-shirt to show you've run 50 parkruns, and that spreads the word of parkrun. But the events are run by thousands of volunteers each week. We do it because we believe in it as a nice community event, it got me into running, and I've made lots of friends doing it.

I might give it a go then. I understand racing against yourself or mates but surely it's a bit embarrassing if you're celebrating coming first as you have no idea how good/slow the people behind you are.

This is the thing. I would support Parkrun taking a clear stance that you should register as sex not self identified gender. But then you’re relying on honesty. And clearly the likes of this person, who was willing to murder someone over it, can’t be relied upon to be honest. I can’t see any way of ‘checking’ it that doesn’t involve putting volunteers in the impossible situation of challenging someone based on a report that they looked a bit too manly to actually be a woman. Or of getting those volunteers to report people to Parkrun HQ to be ‘investigated’. Remembering that Parkrun is an umbrella organisation for hundreds of individual volunteer run park runs in twenty different countries. The only solution I can see is to remove the category records altogether, but then people who do run Parkrun competitively won’t be happy either.

Good to hear, thanks- I like park run because of the fact it's open to all abilities, all people, who just want to get out into the fresh air and hopefully get a bit fitter
There's no pressure, it's all just friendly

There's no need to have an F by their name then, is there?

The only solution I can see is to remove the category records altogether, but then people who do run Parkrun competitively won’t be happy either.

But it's just a fun inclusive way to get fit, I thought!

@changewhale - some runners who are quite "into" running might use parkrun as a tempo effort, training for doing competitive races, or to test themselves to see how fast they can finish in what is a sort of race-like atmosphere if there are some other runners at a similar pace to them. But plenty of other people use parkrun as an opportunity to run and chat with friends, to run with their dog or pushing a double buggy, or just to hold themselves accountable as it's a 9am Saturday thing you can make a routine out of. So whether you push hard or not is up to you. It's always really great to see couch to 5k groups using it as a final 5k run as well! Our final finishers are usually 55mins to an hour plus, which is a fairly regular walking speed.