Top 500 runners at parkrun unfair on female runners?

[MrsPCR]

Every parkrun event has a list of its top 500 fastest runners; however, our local event is gradually just becoming a list of men! There are only 25 women on the list, and the number is constantly decreasing. I made it on there for one week, (about 50 women at that point) before a man kicked me off. I'd now need to run over a minute faster than my PB in less than 21m30 to get back on the list.

YABU - all is fair, it's fastest 500 runners.
YANBU - this is not acknowledging women's achievements or physiological differences.

It's annoying and unfair.

The only thing in it's favour is that it's more honest than having separate men's and women's times when the women's list includes men, or at least those observed to be male at birth, whatever they've done to their bodies since.

I agree that if there is going to be a list that ranks fast runners, then for the sake of inclusion, about which parkrun appears to be very enthusiastic when it means something other than fairness to women, it ought to rank us by age grade rather than time. And, credit where it's due, it does do that, in the age grade league which is immediately above the top 500 on the results tab.

I've just checked the list for my home parkrun. There are 28 female runners in the top 500. Several of those 28 women are or were international standard. I'm above a few of them on the age grade league by virtue of being old, but even the slowest time on the top 500 list is more than two minutes faster than my fastest ever 5k.

It does illustrate nicely that the difference in raw speed between men and women is relevant even at grassroots level. I'm very much of the belief that those of us who will never get near an elite competition shouldn't be denied fairness in sport.

You get an email after a parkrun telling you which number female/male you were and your position in your age category. Obviously you can try and beat your own times too.

They do. Sub 17 male and sub 20 female are listed

Parkrun management only care about men. If they really wanted to encourage women to participate, they’d focus on equal numbers of top finishes in both sex categories. Not just the top 500 runners, which due to biology, will be disproportionately filled by men. Pretty obvious really! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think until the majority of male and female Parkrun participants tell the Parkrun organisers to stick their gender fluidity bollocks up their arse, you’re going to be stuck with nonsense like this.

I occasionally volunteer or run at my local parkrun because it’s very small and friendly (around 20 runners in the winter months) and no men have pretended to be a woman on our course, so far. If it happens, I’ll (make a big fuss and) stop going.

Emailing them to complain makes no difference because they simply don’t care about women.

I've done parkrun maybe around 10 times ir so, and I couldn't get worked up about Top 500 runners.

They have age and sex category as well,
so I would look at those lists to analyse your performance rather than comparing your time against male runners.

No idea how old you are but 21:30 is still pretty fast.

Except the female records now are being taken by males...

I think all of this detracts from the original point of parkrun to encourage everyone and anyone to run. Tail walkers, no last place , all run by volunteers. It's fab but is getting hijacked by competitive club runners and the gender issue. Id hate to see it becoming enmeshed in this political hot potato and lose its original mission. I think the more recent publicity about course records etc is off putting so huge numbers of non runners who are sort of thinking about giving it a go but but get the impression it's only for "proper" runners.

I just looked at our 500th fastest - my local event is relatively new - about 18 months old and you have to be able to run 20 something minutes to get on it. Unsurprisingly, there aren't many women.

As for parkrun not being competitive, I was 3rd female finisher today and I absolutely DO like getting a podium place even if it's only because nobody turns up because the weather is shocking

Sounds weird to have a 'top 500' regardless of sex/age. WTF is the point - except to (presumably inadvertently) reinforce that humans are dimorphic.

It's fab but is getting hijacked by competitive club runners and the gender issue

it started off as a time trial for club runners (whether "competitive" or otherwise) so it's not being hijacked

However, I think the gender issue IS a problem - I don't like the idea at all of being beaten in the female category by a male bodied person, but I think the campaign is eg going to cause parkrun results to be taken off the Power of 10 website which I think will be a shame as I like all my results in one place.

Thats not entirely true, the only recent parkrun SM post I can recall was about the new fastest time by a woman

Yes Ciara Mageean recently ran a new parkrun "world record" at Belfast Victoria parkrun.

It's worth noting that inclusivity means everyone, not just walkers.

Ours breaks down by sex and age - yes of course you can just look for speed but you can filter if you need reference your age etc.

It's not a race, it's about personal achievement so it doesn't matter what others do

Fastest 500 is just one list you can look at. The full list is hopefully attached.

Whoops, photo is a bit big with some bits missing!

No, because it's so easy to separate by sex cos everyone's got one

I was looking at the output in the last week (starting last Sunday up to and including today)

Yes, the world-beating performances do get mentioned (as indeed do other exceptional performances - eg I remember Alex Yee got a shout out for achieving second fastest in 2018) but so do performances that overcome adversity - Dawn Nisbet being the one that went viral

Probably avoiding that one and all hoo-haw (justified) it could bring them.

the actual issue is very serious but I did laugh at 'first vagina over the line!'

YANBU, tbh I don't see why they need fastest 500 at all, seeing as they already have all the other stats broken down by age/sex etc. It tends to present the fastest men as the 'main' race and everyone else as a consolation prize. Plus it just seems odd that a man could be 200 people off featuring on the 'top 200 fastest men,' but take the spot of the 10th fastest woman in the top 500

Also I thought Parkrun was always supposed to be a fun, non-competitive thing with the times there to mainly beat your own PB, too many statistics takes away from that ethos and just turns it into any other race. I must admit that seeing hundreds of people running it in less than half the time I could ever do it puts me off a bit as a newbie.

Sport is sex segregated for good reasons, professional or not, competitive or not. ParkRun is disingenuous to state otherwise. Women's accomplishments shouldn't be erased like this.

YABU to continue to go to Parkrun as a woman given they literally don't care if men come first in any and all categories.

Or

You shouldn't care because according to Parkrun it's all about fun and non-compeitive (even though they print the lists because it is totally about competition)

Why wouldn’t they just do top 250 men and top 250 women. I thought it was generally accepted that men and women compete seperatly and have separate titles. Otherwise you are right op, it’s not really inclusive. They could do a para top 250 too.

This is the problem. You can divide runners and results by sex but some hairy assed average ability bloke will decide that he is a woman and then be no 1 whilst women are forced down the rankings. It's a travesty.

Male bodies and female bodies have very different athletic capabilities on average, which is why sporting events are split into mens events and womens events.

Sounds like it now needs to be categorised as male bodies vs female bodies, because male bodies shouldn't be taking winning spots in female body categories. It's absurd.