Bar codes at the ready, parkrunners anonymous keep going 5K at a time

[OhOneOhTwoOhThree]

New thread for park runners old and new. Who's running at home and away this weekend? Who's volunteering?

Once a month is still 12 times a year karatekimmi which is more than a lot of our runners have done. Some are regulars and in 86 runs we've held have either volunteered once or not at all

A good source of volunteers is people who don't want to run cos they have an injury, or partners of runners. Any way to get some of them on board?

We always say if you're injured have a race etc. even if you're not injured to take advantage of a free scent, supported entirely by volunteers and never give back at all is wrong in my mind. I do enjoy volunteering but if always rather run. We have a small field 45-60 runners a week and need a minimum 6-7 volunteers each week so can be tough. We have two regulars who almost never run and help every week they're free which really helps but it tends to be the faster men who turn up, run, and leave before everyone's finished and never contribute.

What would happen if you had another week like the last one and you cancelled?
Would that drive the point home?

I don't know, what we don't want to do is drive away potential runners by not being consistently there. I will have a little nag and see what happens.

But you also don't want your parkrun to fold because the small group of volunteers that you do get are burnt out.

Can the fast runners scan barcodes after? Or write barcodes down after they have run? I'd also agree with cancelling out or not timing/scanning - not enough volunteers sorry!!

We have fast runners who barcode scan. It works really well

Why would you write barcodes down though?

Threatening to cancel usually works for us. Not had to carry through with it yet. The other back-up plan is to only have 1 barcode scanner (for 500 runners) and make people wait. Anyone who complains at the time it's taking gets an automatic volunteer spot for the following week

Blathers - I like your thinking and am storing it away for the future :o

We have threatened it once but didn't have to. My friend who was rd last week did say if we didn't have enough she's say that first over line gave out tokens and second would scan. People can still walk away from that if you just thrust it on them though.

Blathers, are you at the park run in birmingham? I was at that one recently and couldn't believe how many people were running (and volunteering).

No, I'm MK. Have never done Birmingham....yet

We always have someone to write down barcodes that don't scan at ours.

Our scanner writes barcodes that don't scan.

We get them to email in with their finish position and barcode number. Saves someone a job writing them down. You also only then end up manually adding in the people who are bothered enough to email in rather than absolutely everyone.

We also have a printed list of all the finish token codes as a back up for when they don't scan. Although, the problem generally is just that the person doing the scanning has it too close to the barcode.

My barcode didn't scan once AND I emailed in afterwards AND it was never corrected AND it meant my official 50th was a week after the real 50th still feeling the injustice a year on

I like the idea of the first runners home taking over on scanning. We have exactly the same problem with fast men turning up every week and never volunteering.

My parkrun/its RD have been nominated for a Pride in Bedfordshire award

Fast runners to be scanners...genius plan

We do this regularly. In fact one of our runners is setting it as his challenge for next year - to run and scan every week for a year.

I haven't told him you only get points for the first 3 times you volunteer yet

No parkrun for me tomorrow

Oh dear, OhOne, are you feeling OK?

I should really do my home run tomorrow as I haven't been there for over 2 weeks! I also have not run all week (weather and shin splints) so my time will not be great.

Oh sorry, wasn't trying to be a Drama Queen (though DH tells me I'm quite good at that in RL )

I have to be an hour's drive away from parkrun at 10:30 tomorrow, so it's just not going to fit in my day. I'm just a bit fed up because I have been working abroad all week (not as glam as it sounds) and have only managed 2 x 5K sessions on the hotel treadmill (it's not the kind of place where people run outside) and I'm missing my outdoor running. And Sunday is also looking a bit too over-committed to fit in a run.

DS and I will be at Bedford (without Ohone :() as he wants to improve on his Bedford PB! As it was his first ever parkrun and he fell over part way round so managed 32:27 I have a feeling that unless we are abducted by aliens we will be well under that.

Sorry to be missing you feet and speedy mini-feet! Enjoy

Well, hoping for another 8.30am 'lie in' from a 19mo DS was too much to ask wasn't it?!
So no getting away with it this week...parkrun here I come!

Don't get blown away today everyone!

parkrun with big doggy and chatting to my friend today. 30something I reckon maybe 31. Very damp and foggy hear but still enjoyable. My talk seemed to go down well and we've got volunteers for next few weeks :)