To think the National Trust should not let Park Run volunteers marshal the cars at a NT property

[ParkRunIdiots]

So rocked up a very large NT property with lots of parkland at about 9:25 today.

had gone through the payment control bit, then you drive for about another mile (no joke) to the car park. Just before the car park all traffic stopped in a traffic jam caused by two Park Run people in pink vests who would not let any cars through.

So I sat there and say there and sat there, not a single car moved through. I could see the runners approaching from the right, at times there were gaps in the runners but still no car was allowed through. After ten minutes still no car had been allowed to pass. Several cars behind me did a 20 point turn and left.

Then I realised that the runners weren’t even crossing the road as I’d originally assumed, they turned right and ran alongside the road edge, which has a massive Green verge they could run on . So in my mind no need to stop any car. Or if some risk assessment has deemed it too dangerous to have the cars beside the runners then it means there’s no access to the car park for about 45 mins, in which case the NT property needs to open later!

the runners were all strung out, no big wide bunch/crowd, so single file or in pairs.

anyway I honked at this point. One pink vest guy had obviously been waiting for this moment and charged up, ran past me and bollocked the car behind me who was mid 20 point turn and leaving. That driver grassed me up so the park run guy came and condescendingly told me “when there’s a gap” we will let a car through. I said it was ridiculous, that there had been plenty of gaps, nobody had been allowed through and the runners weren’t even on the road!

At which point he told me if I didn’t like it I could leave!

then the other marshal let some of us through, even though there were still runners running alongside the verge the same as there had been for the last ten minutes! I think they were letting cars through in groups of 5 or 6 as some had gone through just before I got stopped. Again when there were runners there! So nothing to do with gaps!

diagram for an idea.

I do feel like emailing the NT and telling them they need to have an NT person there overseeing it, and preventing the Parkrun people been rude to other users.

I may be slightly anti park run after my (on lead, walking to heel) dog was trampled on and tripped over by several park runners on the inaugural run of my local new park run on a narrow public bridleway and they shouted at me for been there with a dog (even though I’d stepped into the mud at the side). Still not forgiven them for that.

Hi all

Please can we avoid naming people - if it continues, we will need to delete the thread.

Sorry, I was just referring to his username. I’ve no idea what his actual name is

I've come across 'Mr Manners' type before. He confuses winning an argument with winning support. Big mistake. Particularly when representing a large organisation in a public arena.

Looks like the Parkrun PR people have found out about @Manners23's booboo and got him to withdraw the post.

I see that they tell parkrunners to park in their designated area. So I suspect the photo that @Manners23 produced was indeed the car park just for them, not the one for the general public.

Also the photo of runners on their website does suggest that it would be difficult to get past them unless they are properly marshalled.

Hmm, so MrManners was quite happy to come and mansplian to @ParkRunIdiots but not so keen when the women called him out on his pomposity

Shame he was allowed to have it deleted, an apology would have been a better course of action imo

OP YANBU. They sound entitled and a pain in the arse. I would have been annoyed too.

Sorry but…Isn’t it kind of obvious that there will be lots of runners and people at a parkrun site at 8.30-9,30ish?? Surely you can just go there around that time. This is like trying to park outside a school at 8.45 and complaining about all the parents in the way 🤷🏻‍♀️

I didn’t realise parkrun was only for people held at gunpoint. I thought running in the cold through a park was entirely voluntary

So anyone who needs to do anything on a Saturday morning should work around an optional leisure activity?

School run parents annoy me too, but at least they’re facilitating compulsory education.

And at a national trust site that the OP had paid to get into. (And crucially the parkrunners had not!)

The cheek of these types.

That analogy isn't uiye right, the runners weren't stopping the car, it would be like the teachers stopping pedestrians passing school entrance at home time and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't go down too well

Why does park run need any organising at all. Wasn’t the point that you go to the park at the same time as some other people and run? You can do that without any stewards

Because someone saw an opportunity to monetise it!

You can but that's not what parkrun is about, there's room for both types of running

How, it's completely free hence the issue here with volunteers

Sponsorships and merchandise.

Still totally free for the participants, not unreasonable for the organisation to raise money for its running costs (no pun intended)

If it was purely people turning up to run together, without being 'organised' the costs wouldn't be there to cover.

What's this supposed to mean? Who's making money out of parkrun? It's a registered charity with a small staff at headquarters. Nobody pays to belong to it, so costs are covered by sponsorship. It's established branches in many other countries so you'd expect it to need some central staff. As for why it needs volunteers and marshals, this is precisely to make sure that both runners and other park users are kept safe and to time the event and process the results. The whole premise is that parkrun is a free 5k event where you get a time at the end if you want one. To get your time, you register on the website, but you don't need to enter any parkrun event - you just turn up and do it. It's an incredibly simple and efficient model which has persuaded millions of people around the world to get out and run or walk on a Saturday morning. Making it a timed event has a huge motivating effect on people who want to try to improve their time from week to week.

So you'd prefer a model where hundreds of people turned up to run at the same time with absolutely nobody doing any marshalling? Sounds a great plan, can't see what could possibly go wrong with that.

One of the reasons landowners like councils and the NT give permission for parkruns is that there will be volunteers making sure everything goes smoothly.

Gosh. How handy for people with Very Important Jobs then.

I'm not knocking it as a concept, just making the point that anything informal which becomes successful is usually formalised and monetised before long.