Parkrun to remove course records

[Ingenieur]

In response to criticism of its "gender categorisation policies", Parkrun are now removing a suite of details and records from the site.

https://twitter.com/Cantspekl/status/1755170910787490028

One more thing taken away...

If the fastest runners data is so unreliable Mushypeas why collate it? Would you celebrate a 30 year old runner as fastest runner for kids? If not, why not? Why have the criteria if they cannot be applied?

I think this could work in favour as now men are being affected people are listening. Funny how it’s a run not a race for women but now the men can’t see their records they don’t seem to like it

Reading the Torygraph article the rational for "gender, not sex" seemed to be that some trans weren't ready to be outed as trans, so letting "John" run as "Jane" was "kind". On the contrary, I would have thought it "outing" if the bloke who finished in front of you turned up in the results as "Jane".

There are plenty of workaround solutions to this in kids' competitive sport (surely one of the race directors has a sporty child?).

Take swimming, for example. For various reasons, a parent might wish others didn't know where their child is now living/competing. Those kids still
compete with a swim ID but the results show "name withheld".

Parkrun just enables cheating.

I don't think anyone would expect the volunteers to police sex categories. It's that parkrun have set the thing from registration that men can register as women if they want to. If the registration asked for sex at birth, and maybe also recorded if their gender identity matched their biological sex, then everyone knows where they stand and it makes it easier to correct course records etc if necessary. Of course people can cheat at parkrun - Runners World did a stupid article thinking they were super clever only running part of a course - but it's stated at the beginning of the run that people should only go through the finish tunnel when they've run 5km.

And who are they blaming?

Hopefully the cheating men who caused the issue in the first place, and not the women complaining about the cheating.

The age category records are still there. If you for example you go into your local results and click on an age group, it is a clickable link

I just looked at this again, and they no longer are :(

There's a surprising amount of vitriol being aimed at women in X. "Look what you made them do."

Never ever forget how much men hate women etc. Depressing.

The point is, is men can't have women's records, no one can.

I have started (badly running) with the aim of being able to do Parkrun type things.

Is there any alternative to Parkrun? Their stance previously, and now this, has really annoyed me. I would never be anywhere near leaderboards (unless for slowest time), but it is the principle.

We wouldn't 'celebrate' them we just wouldn't know it was a mistake in the results unless we were told!

As a regular timekeeper and results processor, the reliability of the times are very dependent on how long we're willing to spend wrangling the results and deleting or adding lines in to account for dropped tokens, funnel duckers, mistiming, people having to queue for several minutes to even get over the line (January has been crazy busy at our event).

It's a 'free weekly timed' run that started as a time trial so the point has always been to collect times, and when it was a time trial to list the results each week so people could compare week by week. I imagine if it started now they wouldn't publish results at all, you'd just be sent your time directly and be able to access your own results and no one else's. I can forsee it heading that way. The search for athlete function has been removed citing data protection. You can still ctrl F look for names in the results list if you know the event someone ran at then view their profile. That'll probably change at some point.

Is there any alternative to Parkrun? Their stance previously, and now this, has really annoyed me. I would never be anywhere near leaderboards (unless for slowest time), but it is the principle

If you live or work in London, there is a last Friday of the month 5k in Hyde Park. I've done it a few times.

Otherwise there are various 5k races. I think there's also something in Princes Risborough which happens every Sunday.

I imagine if it started now they wouldn't publish results at all, you'd just be sent your time directly and be able to access your own results and no one else's. I can forsee it heading that way. The search for athlete function has been removed citing data protection. You can still ctrl F look for names in the results list if you know the event someone ran at then view their profile. That'll probably change at some point

Well I think the results will stop going to the Power of 10 soon, and then they can block the results on the parkrun website too and you'll only be able to see your own. However, that only applies to the UK - I don't know how it would work overseas.

It will be a shame if they do get rid of the ability to see other peoples' results - it can be quite useful to work out how hard or easy a course is by comparing their times at eg Torbay (flat and fast) and Parke (hilly and cross-country type so slow).

Thank you . I will have a look for something local- good to know there might be something.

So disappointed though!

That'll be harder for RDs too - at our juniors they look at who is approaching milestones and make sure they have the bands etc

Personally I'm for it I think strava has ruined the love of running

What a mess. I don’t think we should be putting anything extra on volunteers who are giving up their time and I certainly don’t ever want them to be in a position where they have to police this stuff (a friend got stabbed playing amateur Saturday morning football once after a minor dispute).

As someone said up thread, if world boxing and world rugby aren’t putting a lid on this I don’t see why pr should.

Surely if they really believed twaw theyd have left all the records up?

Spoiler alert: on Reddit it's overwhelmingly the latter.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/08/parkrun-records-dropped-from-website

The Guardian and Parkrun claiming records have been dropped from the website to avoid putting off new entrants?

Daily Mail's take on the story of the records' removal.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13061567/Parkrun-removes-gender-course-age-records-website-row-trans-women.html

I went to troll them a bit. Maybe the competitive young men will complain.

I think there are more parkrunners that love stats than they realise. It is potentially the hook that gets people coming back - improving pbs, working towards attendance t shirts, alphabet challenges etc. You won’t immediately know the community as a newbie.

Maybe a good proportion of people come for the stats, stay for the community. I could be wrong and just talking about myself but I know I wouldn’t run if it wasn’t for parkrun and I wouldn’t have formed my parkrun habit without the numbers.

Yes the events won’t change and our personal stats will still be available and all the 5k app challenges will still be there so there are still numbers and stats to enjoy but it is interesting to look at the bigger picture nationally and locally. Where do I appear on the age grade list for my parkrun? can I go up a few places? what are the records for the different courses? How many different parkruns is the most an individual has done? Which parkrun has doubled their attendance record because it was event number 777 or they were the only one open on Christmas Day?

This information is now harder to access and that is less fun for those of us that are interested and also makes the organisation more opaque.

In terms of throwing blame around I think it is a three way thing. Trans activists for insisting that TWAW applies to sports too and that probably makes individual trans women afraid to choose the prefer not to say option for fear of attracting the wrath of their community. The Gender Critical feminists campaign. Yes I get it but I feel in this case the priority is that everyone feels welcome and that is what parkrun have put first. Parkrun HQ - They are between a rock and a hard place to be fair to them but I think they should change the categories to by sex or perhaps female and open - no they couldn’t police it but at least they would be indicating the intention behind the categories. I realise I have contradicted myself - It is not a simple situation and I have sympathy with all three sides of it.

I went to look at this - all the usual stuff about do a race if you want to "win" etc.

I am glad that someone posted about it being a time trial. I get really fed up with people telling those of us who've done parkrun for years (over a decade in my case) to suck eggs.

parkrun has morphed over the years to a community event to unlock funding. But it was originally a time trial, that is its core and it wasn't a race because of UKA insurance issues.

I take your point Liese and it is important to encourage exercise. However, I think women are just sick of being told to suck it up for greater good and their rights and concerns always being sent to the back of the line while something considered (by men) to be more important takes precedence. Time to have our voices heard for once.

I feel sad about this. It's the fact that 'it's not a race' but still had times and leader boards that made it so perfect - so truly diverse. A chance for girls to shine and gain confidence from seeing 'first woman'. For children like my ND DD it's the only time she's ever come top at anything, and had her 'name in lights' because she can't cope with 'normal' athletics and the pressure.
I guess it's free and run by volunteers, so perhaps I'm being selfish. But genuinely I just feel a bit heartbroken.

People aren't objecting to "running alongside people who are trans" - they are specifically objecting to those people taking the course records for females. It's fine for someone trans to turn up and run. Just record their results in the correct sex category, and job's done. But when females are pushed out of their records and wins by males, it's unfair and ParkRun could have made it clear that this is not what the records are based on. It usually is obvious when a male is running in a female race - it's not about looking feminine or conforming to stereotypes, but purely physical characteristics that give it away. An actual female can dress/present in as unfeminine a way as she wants, and it's not an issue. However ,I don't think it's practical for ParkRun to investigate those cases, true - but they could make it clear that the records are based on sex categories and that anything else is cheating, instead of choosing to let people decide what category they want to be in , which implicitly affirms the idea that it's fine and records can be based on self-identified gender.