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 agree to a large extent, and I'd still go even if my only "result" was my personal time, but the competitive features are already embedded in the system and it would be a backward step to remove them as a reaction to a small number of males interfering with the validity of some women's placings and records. Parkrun may be focused on participation, but the sharp end of the field matters too.

I’d say I’m pretty GC. I definitely am pretty vocal about men in women’s sport. I also do Parkrun. Someone up thread said that everyone at Parkrun self identifies, and I think that’s the point. If you do Parkrun, you’ll know that there are different categories for age and sex. Older women, younger women, girls over 11, girls under 11, and so on. Each of these categories, in the results each week, has rankings. So it’s possible for someone to be first woman in their age category for example. Nobody is going to check their ID to check they are the age they are, just as they aren’t going to check whether they were actually born a woman. The record doesn’t mean anything outside of Parkrun. It can’t be used in the competitive athletics world, because, apart from anything else, the timing mechanism is inaccurate. I’d say pretty much every other week at our Parkrun something goes wrong with the results. Someone jumps the funnel, doesn’t hand their token in, the scanners have an issue, and so on. You could argue that this person should have their ‘record’ stripped. But you could also argue that someone else might also need to have their ‘record’ stripped because they cut a corner on the path, or the timing went wrong that week, or they aren’t the age they say they are….and so on. Parkrun isn’t competitive athletics, and if they strip this ‘record’ it opens a can of worms for other past results.

Personally, I think that the focus in the Parkrun world on ‘ records’ is wrong, given its ethos. But that’s a different debate.

People can lie about their age for Parkrun as well, doesn't make it fair or right.

Parkrun is both inclusive and competitive. For those who just want a Saturday morning run, there is no requirement to register their sex and age or get a result. People that do register, want the result becuase it matters to them. Some will be doing it to compare their own results and some will to compare where they are in their age and sex cohort.

Mr Monkey is a keen Parkrunner and in the last year he has been aiming to get a good for age marathon time. He has been using his Parkrun results as part of his overall training schedule to track how he is doing within his age and sex class - as that is how good for age times work. If someone younger had self ID'd in to his age class, his results and tracking would be off.

If Parkrun wants to offer this service to people it has to be true and useful. If it is just an inclusive fun run in the park then stop the time tracking by age and sex. However they know if they do that many regulars would stop attending.

So for me it is not really about whether the course "record" is fair but is the data produced, that many runners use, accurate and fair?

I haven’t read the full thread but the issue is that on the website it still states the they won and are a record holder, and that’s what needs to be removed

So because you don’t run very fast and just do it for the participation (which is absolutely fine), you support a situation that could prevent the fastest woman from getting the women’s record?

Or publish the times, with a caveat that they are meaningless.

The woman's time a female participant is comparing herself against could easily have been accomplished by a male.

I could only read the start of the Telegraph article due to paywall. I don't understand entirely as those in prison run under pseudonyms, and this person has been in prison since 2017. It states "a local parkrun" but is that a prison one?

All very confusing

Exactly.

And if someone who is 20 emailed ParkRun HQ and said "Is it OK to self-ID my age? I'm not eligible for Junior ParkRun but I think I would be more competitive in that event and I would find it very invalidating to have to race with my peers in the adult ParkRun events", do you think ParkRun would reply "No problem! ParkRun is an inclusive event just for fun. We welcome everyone into the Junior ParkRun events."?

Because this very much seems to be a concession they are willing to sanction so long as it's only messing things up for women and girls.

Depends how accurate you want it. But no, I’d say it’s not accurate. It’s not chip timed. There’s no start line. Your time will depend on where you start in amongst the crowd at the start. There’s nobody checking to stop people cutting corners, or what sex they were born as, or what their real age is.

I understand the argument that people use the results data for their own means, like your dh, and that’s fine. But they need to take it in the context of what it is - not particularly accurate or verified data from a volunteer run event in the local park.

I know that. But as people have said if a 25 year old man self id'd in to the over 50s group of men there would be an uproar.

Why does it only matter when women have to budge over?

Also there is a bige difference between some timing inaccuracies within your own sex and age cohort and someone being included in that cohort who has significant advantages and will probably post an outlier time.

It matters equally. But there is no mechanism for Parkrun to verify any result - whether that’s whether someone is really a woman, or whether someone is really over 50. It’s equally unverified for all categories.

Of course. As it is for any mass event. But most people know it is not ok to lie and are aware there will be consequences if they do and get found out.

Oh I can run quite fast when I really want to. I've been first in age group a couple of times, on the harder trail courses granted, but still it's amazing the difference 1 day can make when you're changing age group. And yes it's nice to be able to say you were 1st in something, but I didn't get any prizes for it, because there are no prizes. And if I remember rightly the week after when I didn't get 1st in age group, I was actually quicker.

It's just not a race (except against yourself), I enter plenty of races and can categorically tell you parkrun is not a race, your time is never accurate. I press the button on my garmin as I cross the start and again on finish and my "official" time never matches my watch. I don't think that many parkrun courses are exactly 5k either, I've been to ones that have been anything from 2.97 to 3.45miles (that was an epic misplacement of the turn point). The one I do most often is usually around 3.17miles, not a huge amount more than 5k, but still more). It usually takes time to filter through the start, that adds a few seconds, then you're relying on the reaction time of the time keeper at the finish. Plus there's all the other little things that can go wrong.

I run parkrun as a way of seeing my own progress (or lack of), but I don't rely on their timings. I also run parkrun because I like to be able to pick a person in front of me and see if I can catch them up, I don't care if that person is male female or trans.

If I want to actually race then I do an official race, one that has a timing chip on my bib (or shoe), that gives me an accurate time (usually to the millisecond). Parkrun falls more in to the "fun run" category, which BTW I treat the same way that I treat official races because that's how I enjoy running.

From what I understand it isn’t recently achieved, it was prior to prison and actually contributed to the attack- that they were facing losing running records.
They were facing the removal of their titles in British Athletics due to failure to provide testosterone levels through blood tests. They choose to, instead of getting blood tests, to attempt to kill someone as a premeditated attack. The person has partially lost their sight and been disabled in the attempted killing.
Let’s ask another question. Ignore the trans bit:
Should someone who tries to kill a sports official, a convicted attempted murderer, be stripped of their titles because they are a risk to the sport? If the crime was linked to attempting to go against sporting rules or circumvent them as a sole motive.
I don’t think there would be an outcry if for example a footballer stabbed a referee who gave them a red card in a final and then was stripped of sporting titles.
If this person runs to running in any capacity they are a significant potential risk to others, I do think they should be barred from ParkRun and stripped of titles because of the nature of the offence. It’s an extreme case, and a reasonable outcome to ensure safety of volunteers

Found it. She ran the record in 2012
https://www.parkrun.org.uk/aberystwyth/

Parkrun is a fun run and it's not a competition, nor is it designed to be. It's not even particularly accurate. It's organised by volunteers of varying skill.

I've found my local parkrun invaluable and I prefer to time myself. It doesn't matter to me where I place in what category or who is in front of me - no parkrun runner is competing for anything, there is no first prize or trophy - and to be quite honest I have no idea who the "best" runners are because I'm only paying attention to myself. I won't be boycotting mine.

Whenever people try to argue that both sides are as bad as each other in this debate I do think they need to be reminded that a man who sees himself as a man's conception of a woman tried to murder a sporting official who questioned the fairness of trans ideology. Other men who identify as a man's conception of a woman have committed murders and violent crimes (many of them motivated by sex or hatred of women) but this is the one clear case where the attempted murder was ideological.

Therefore I can't be too arsed at the idea that a transgender female holds a record.

Jeska is male. This isn't about "trans men".

If you treat a non-competitive volunteer-run fun run as a serious competition then that's on you. You need to take it as it comes, not complain that it's not organised like a different kind of event.

If it's not a competition and not designed to be, what point is there, or was there ever, in publishing participants' times, and in age and sex categories at that, rather than just in order of arrival or alphabetically?

Anyway, since the results are meaningless, either stop publishing them or say so clearly, on the website and wherever they are published.

They tried to murder a sports official, it’s unusual because it’s directly related to the sport. Most crimes are not attempting to kill someone because you disagree with an athletics decision, I reckon it’s very very rare. It’s quite reasonable that a sport may additionally sanction someone who has a proven risk towards officials or volunteers in the sport. I’m sure if a rugby player attacked a referee or something they’d be barred from rugby, in addition to the prison sentence.

Except she doesn’t hold the parkrun record. Not even close. Her fastest time is 17:18, which whilst very swift, is nearly two minutes slower than the women’s parkrun record. What a load of nonsense that’s easily fact checked.

parkrun records are held for each course.