To think Parkrun should have an hour cut-off

[SummerAsh]

200+ participants, all but two completed in under 54 minutes… but the last two women ambled around chatting and took over 1 hour 10 minutes.

I appreciate that Parkrun should be inclusive, but that’s taking the piss, and unfair on the 20 or so volunteers who give up the first part of their Saturday mornings…. It’s hard enough getting volunteers as it is, without expecting everyone to be saintly martyrs with endless patience.

To complete in an hour requires a pace of 3.1 mph (I.e 5km = 3.1 miles)… According to Google, that’s a casual walking pace.

AIBU to think that if you can’t or won’t complete a park”run” at even a casual walking pace, then parkrun isn’t for you. I think that an hour cut off is more than accommodating enough, and an appropriate line to draw.

Otherwise, what is reasonable? Is it reasonable to accommodate a 90-year old taking 3 hours with their zimmer? If not, where the line if not an hour.

Catering for the "lowest common denominator" is literally the point of parkrun.

Regardless of it's origins, it's purpose now an inclusive event. If someone turns up and takes an hour to get round they should be as welcome as someone who does it in 20 minutes.

If individual volunteers don't like that, maybe they need to find something else to do on a saturday morning. Volunteering and bitching about Parkrun because people take "too long" is like a dog person volunteering to help at a cat rescue centre.

People saying it's only 15 mins have never been timekeeper on a bitter winter's morning!

It is frustrating when people are strolling round without a care in the world while you can't feel your fingers , but IME that doesn't actually happen that much, usually the people who are over an hour are those who have a disability or injury that makes getting round a challenge, and I fully support parkrun being there for them.

ETA or are very overweight and taking their furst stes towards fitness, and again I am very happy to support their efforts.

But it did used to be for actual runners. We did used to all volunteer, that changed when this 'parkwalk' thing started.

So tell everyone that after an hour volunteers will pack up.

Plus there are also walking communities so I'm not sure why you're trying to make the point that parkrun is the only community available to walkers.

Yep it’s giving ewww fat (older, different in some way) people ..then the same person who mocks fat people exercising

Lots of things used to be the case that aren’t now.

I do a 5k in about 45 minutes. Attitudes like yours are why I’ll never do a parkrun.

"Sensible" parkruns definitely do not send marshalls home after an hour.

We don't even pack our finishing funnel up until the tail walker has finished. A couple of the scanners usually head off once 90% of people are finished but marshalls don't move until the tail walker passes and the close down team are always there until last to pack away and pick up random bits of litter (not our litter, just whatever was in the park). We manage it in the rain, chatting and with a positive attitude.

You make yourself sound thoroughly unpleasant.

Park Run has partnerships / funding that will require inclusivity…

If the ethos isn't for you, then maybe find an elite running club

I'm finding your posts terribly unattractive OP. Yes, and entitled. Is evertthing in your life a competition with stringent rules?

You still run though?

So maybe it's time to make this two events, one for the runners, one for the walkers, then you can volunteer for the running event only if an extra 15 minutes bothers you so much.

People like you isn't what the thread is about though is it. It's about people that amble along very slowly chatting away taking over an hour.

Interestingly in 9 pages of posts,the OP hasn't actually said whether or not they are a regular parkrun volunteer

In reality it is though. It’s fast runners thinking they’re better than slow runners/walkers. In today’s day and age we should be encouraging all exercise!

I think you've misunderstood the thread.

What an odd question you’ve posed - someone took ten minutes longer than the hour you want as a cut off - but you then make some false e equivalence and begin talking about a hypothetical scenario where someone is taking hours, like that’s the same conversation.

People have suggested having two shifts - set up and first half and then second half and close down. But then you'd need even more volunteers. And the tail walker still has to do the whole thing (unless they slot in after one lap on multi-lap courses).

I've been doing parkrun for 13 years. Very early on our run director realised an elderly man was sitting on a bench watching every week, and encouraged him to walk round with her. It's always been for everyone.

I absolutely hate the running club "takeovers", and think that really isn't in the spirt of the thing. It can make events seem very unwelcoming to people outside of the clique. I am a very active running club member and volunteer a lot, but we never do it en masse.

I also think any "proper" runner who can't give two or three volunteering sessions a year should probably accept parkrun isn't for them, rather than complaining about less able people taking part

I agree with those saying that walking 5km in under an hour is a brisk walk rather than a dawdle for many. 3mph (about 4.8kph) is often quoted as "average walking pace" for adults, but that's all ages. Once you start breaking it down by age then 5kph would be considerably more than an amble for many people. If the table in this article from Runner's World is to be believed than there must be a lot of people who walk more slowly. https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a62718174/how-long-to-walk-10000-steps/
I don't think it can be assumed that anyone who takes more than an hour is lazy or decrepit!
And isn't that the whole point of Parkrun? As I understand it it's meant to be a community exercise thing rather than an athletics event, and to encourage participation by people who would never join a running club for various reasons, their pace included.
I don't run, cycling is my thing, but my impression is that Parkrun is to running clubs is what Breeze and similar programmes are to cycling clubs. Saying that riders have to be able to maintain a certain speed to go on a Breeze ride would totally defeat the object, and a volunteer Leader who is unwilling to ride at the pace of a new/unfit/under confident rider no matter how slow, is in the wrong role - there are club rides for that. Is it not much the same with Parkrun?
I do have sympathy with the volunteers as I do plenty of volunteering myself and it can be very frustrating. I have lots of gripes with British Cycling and I do voice those through the relevant channels, but I continue to volunteer because I there's more that I agree with than disagree with so I do have to suck up some of the stuff I don't like. If I didn't agree with the fundamental ethos of an organisation I volunteered for though, I'd leave and find something where I was a better fit. Isn't the whole raison d' être of Parkrun to break down barriers to participation? Setting a time limit would surely undermine that and exclude the very people who are least likely to access other opportunities?

Thanks! I'm 67. If I make it round a Parkrun course by the time I'm 70, I might do the same.

Well you’ve inadvertently hit the nail on the head. Parkrun was set up to help runners, as the name indicates. As it grew in popularity, runners of a wider range of abilities joined. This growth in popularity meant Parkrun became more corporate, needed more funding, and the only way to get more funding was to hit the ‘inclusivity’ targets of the funders. Hence women runners were shoved under the bus to allow men with trans identities to run in their sex categories, then the runners who liked the hit of being first were thrown under the bus Parkrun as no longer publishing winners to try to stop the argument over men in women’s categories. Alongside this Parkrun had to pretend Parkrun is not a race despite it being organized in exactly the same way as any other amateur race, and now it has had to say it’s for walkers to, to get access to the funding it needs. These are all funding driven changes to keep the corporate body alive. That’s why Parkrun has evolved into the uneasy hybrid, as I posted upstream, of being organized as a race for runners yet marketed as an all inclusive community health project.

Or, unless I've missed it (apologies if I have, OP) answered my question as to where they volunteer.

A lot of the "proper" runners as you call them volunteer in other ways - including at junior parkrun. Or they might set up the course on a dark winter morning while I'm only just getting up!

And a lot of parkruns like running club takeovers as it gives them a week off from worrying about filling the rota. Also: newsflash: not everyone in a running club is fast. In fact there's a ladies' club near me, which is in lots of local towns now where the fastest run on offer is 30 minutes for 5k. All the other pace groups are slower.