I want to preface this by saying I love parkrun, the inclusivity, community and encouragement and I suppose that's why this morning has upset me in the way it has!
I'm not new to parkrun but have had a long hiatus due to illness/injury, so in the last few weeks I've been going and walking it. I feel silly for feeling a need to quantify my speed because it shouldn't matter how fast/slow you are but I walk it in around 45 minutes, so I'm not ambling! When I've volunteered as tailwalker some people have finished in up to 1h15 and I've never minded, I'm happy they've come to join in and have either chatted with them as we walk together, or remained at a respectful distance mirroring their pace.
Today there were fewer walkers than usual and I was last from the start, other than two tailwalkers. They were walking so close behind me it felt really aggressive and it was pushing me to go faster (they were walking within 2 - 3ft of me, pretty much on my heels). On a couple of occasions I slowed down a bit and they actually overtook me before dropping back. They definitely knew I was taking part as they had asked me. I had my headphones on so they maybe thought I couldn't hear but they also made comments like 'I NORMALLY walk quite fast' and towards the end 'we're not going to finish in under 45 minutes now' which made me feel bad. At the end we had to actively find the person handing out finish tokens as they were off packing stuff away.
I know I should have said something, but I didn't know how to politely say 'stop walking so close and aggressively behind me' so I didn't.
I know it's volunteers (I have volunteered plenty myself) but would it be inappropriate to raise my experience? I feel I want to give some feedback to stop other people being put off going - if today had been my first time I definitely wouldn't be going again, as I felt so unwelcome.
Any thoughts welcome!