To think Parkrun shouldn't take priority over the rest of the public?

[MaryRoze]

9.30am every Saturday, our biggest park is inundated with Parkrunners. There are hundreds of them.

They take up the 3 biggest car parks (including the one at the start of the dog walking trail), meaning I need to park at the furthest away one. Not a problem except I can't get to the furthest away one because volunteers stop the traffic to let the runners go past.

Once I get parked, I'm pushed to the side of all the main paths because they're running 3 or 4 abreast. I try to go down the muddier gravel paths, but they're down there too. An older couple today got a "fuck sake" because they couldn't move out of one runners way quick enough.

Parents are being stopped from crossing the path between car park and playground with their kids because the runners are passing by.

I get that Parkrun is fantastic for people's physical health and mental health, and it's clearly very popular but AIBU to think they need to be courteous of other park users too?

the other one closer to me is a there and back route on a narrow (think 3ft) footpath. I was walking along it the first ever week it ran,,,,so no idea it was a thing. It was like being charged at by a herd of wildebeest. I walked in the narrow strip of grass off the path. Still being physically jostled by runners desperate to get past me. Lost count of how many people ran into and tripped over my small dog who was terrified (on a short lead), people kept swearing at me when they tripped over the dog. I’ve never been back there on a Saturday and it was my regular Saturday morning walk for years.

If you had known the event was happening would you have avoided that path? It sounds like there were no marshals or notification (on entrance to park) to alert you.
For many parkruns it would not be advisable for non participants (especially those with dogs) to try and share the path.

Am I right in thinking that parkrun cannot actually close off the route because that's a whole level of organisation that would make the event too difficult to hold?

I suppose in an ideal world everyone would accommodate everyone else and try and find a way to work with the inconvenience of a path being less than ideal for walkers for a short time each weekend.

Why shouldn't they use the park like this? What do you say when you see runners normally? It's 60 bloody minutes once a week. Maybe they think you're unreasonable for walking your dog during parkrun? Park runners are park users, entitled to use pathways and car parks.

Also, having had experience of these things, park runners are a god send when it comes to making bids to fund parks, their pathways and such. You need to be able to point to users and park run are easily quantifiable.

But where can a few hundred people go?

Surely it’s simpler to give the park for one hour once a week?

Better to shut the roads, perhaps, and do a route past all their houses, so that none of them stray too far from home or have to drive to the run?

That would make people happy, right?

@CoffeeCatsAndVodka @lemonmeringueno3

Totally missed the joke there, sorry!

Can't believe the people complaining about the space taken. If we assume that the path is 2 meters wide over 5km the area of parkrun 10,000 msq, which about the size of a football pitch (which is "hogged" exclusively by 22 people). A 400 acre park is 1.6m msq so the parkruns uses about just over 0.5% of the park. If you consider exercise per msq and a 400 attendance for parkrun, each parkrunner uses 25 msq, whereas, a each footballer uses 454 sqm. Conclusion: Football pitches should be replace with extra parkruns.

The parkrun in the OP is held too late. In Aus it starts at 8:00.

830 runners.... and well over 700 finished in 35 min ....so a fairly small window of time to avoid the common....

Correct. I’ve never been back there since in a Saturday. Which is a shame because I walked there on a Saturday morning for years.

And there were no signs as I started from the other end of the footpath from them. It’s not a park btw it’s just a straight footpath /cycle route on an old railway line. I got to their turn point where there was a sign (before any runners had arrived) and kept going as I had no idea if the 400 runners about to come thundering down the path towards me and how un respectful to other path users they were going to be. I’d imagined a group of people sedately jogging along and happily passing round people, not shoving into me and falling over my dog. I turned round immediately but it was too late, wave after wave just kept coming and there are no paths off the path we were on.

A more remote part of the park so they’re not interfering with car park access like happened to the OP.

What a good idea!
”We all want to get a good time but more importantly most want to have a good time. To facilitate this, please be courteous to each other and other park users.”

Most parks are t that big.

It’s one hour once a week. If desperate to walk at the same time, then tag on at the back and by the time the runners have lapped you, they will be spread out.

I could just as easily whine about kids on their bikes as I’m trying to walk on the paths. The kids should go to a remote part and cycle in circles instead of putting cycling on walker’s paths.

Parkrun organisers already say this!

Stick to the right at my regular one...

Yes.
I know.
It was a quote taken from ParkRun.
Sigh…

Totally agree. I complained about one once after an official told me to put my dogs on leads due to the runners. We were as entitled to be there as the park run people. I was fuming!

I walk my dog every Saturday morning while my DC runs.

In the parkrun I regularly see people with disabilities running with assistants beside them. It’s a truly wonderful, social, welcoming hour. Sometimes it’s the only time in the week, I get to chat and walk with somebody new. I really look forward to it.

Did the official tell you to leave as well? If not, then surely you would have preferred them to be safe than getting lost or hurt in a crowd of runners!

Probably because they've grasped the "walk" part of the parkwalk initiative instead

You shouldn’t have had to be asked to put your dogs on leads when the park was busy.
I’m a dog owner and when I see dogs off leads approach me, I ask for them to be put on leads. If the owners refuse, I carry a stick and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

Ah, ok, if there’s any contest between runners and dog walkers then the runners get priority.

My mild exasperation at park runners is them crowding out other people, especially those with children, not people wanting to exercise their dogs. The dogs can get in the bin

@MelainesLaugh yiur dogs should be on a lead on the park. You are NOT entitled (even though you think you are!) to have your dog running off the lead. Park runners are 100% more entitled to be running in a park than your dog off its lead.

Well played OP, two thirds agree. It's become a bloody cult!

Why on earth do you think you are more entitled to a car park space than anyone else?! Is or your park? Is it theirs?

I never said that at all. You’re making stuff up now.

I’m saying they should not block access to the car park, the volunteers stop motorists driving to the car park because the park run route crosses the access road to the car park.

so apparently it’s their car park. 🤷‍♀️. But let’s face it, it’s not is it? It’s a public park, so why does one group get to stop the traffic and not let people in? That’s not me, it’s the park run.