Parkrunners! Parkrun survey

[Parkrunners]

If anyone is a parkrunner and has a survey from them, I'd urge you to fill it in. There are two free text sections which provide an opportunity to tell them exactly what the impact of their sexist policy decision not to protect the female sex category has been. They have clearly commissioned this survey to gather data on the mental health and motivation and self esteem and self achievement benefits of Parkrun, as well as its competitive benefits and self-competition benefits, but none of that has been protected for women and girl runners who have effectively been told that Parkrun cannot be bothered to collect accurate sex category data for them, because we somehow don't count. What is it meant to do to the motivation and mental health of female runners to be told we are so second class that our sex category doesn't matter and can be dispensed with?

As a middle aged woman, I am particularly pissed off as the only way I can tell if my running performance is declining, maintaining or improving is to compare myself to others in the same age or sex category. And I can only do this if the sex category is protected.

I am really sick of Parkrun both knowing full well the importance of age and sex data for running and for their Parkrun model, and knowing full well they cannot remove this as the men would not stand for it, whilst also pretending none of this matters and they are just a fun little social run when they need to pretend its ok to record runners under gender identity. Parkrun are trying to maintain a position of both recording this data and pretending it doesn't matter. This is nonsensical.

to everyone run.
They do but we separate sports by SEX for a reason

It's a bloody fun run though.
The only reason people want it in this scenario though is to compare themselves to everyone else and try and make it competitive.
It's not.

Except they age grade the results using gender which is fucking nonsense.

If it's just fun run tell the transwomen to stay out of the female category.

Clearly you either don't understand the issue with the data or are quite happy bowing to men's desires being elevated above female rights to fairness. Whatever just go and do your fun run and leave us to fight this. Because we're never going to stop fighting it, gender destroys everything it touches. It needs to be fought.

https://x.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1845093870788297126?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

This young man again got 1st Female in parkrun Australia today, bumping down nearly 150 females, plus top 3 overall and top 3 by age grade ranking. Farcical.

This male ran again today in the Female category in parkrun Australia. As usual, massive numbers of females suffered unfairness - he bumped down nearly 200.

But what was noteworthy today was how his massively inflated age grade % score caused unfairness for v fast older men…

x.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1845049655282839620?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

How many 1st Female finishes held by males in parkrun is, in your view, fine?

Currently it stands at 210 & rising. Would 500 be fine? 1000? 10,000? All of them? Please state a number.

Why does parkrun have a Female category? Please explain.

x.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1843533182890623426?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

Firstly thank you to the OP for highlighting the survey. I am a running coach and run leader, member of two running clubs and a very regular parkrun volunteer (including being Run Director -RD of a parkrun and founder of a parkrun). As RD I can see why individual parkruns need support from parkrun to take a stance on sex segregation. It would still be extremely difficult to police but parkrun need to take this stance to protect women's participation in this.

parkrun is the greatest grassroots running movement in the world and it is precisely why sex matters within it.

We know that girls and women's participation in sports drops significantly from puberty onwards. Many of the women I coach are starting exercise from a very low base in their 30s, 40s or 50s. While it is great to see individual improvements each week, it is also important to be able to compare yourself to your peers and the age grading needs to be sex segregated. We know that there are significant sex differences and these are well documented: https://boysvswomen.com/#/ We also know that motivating girls and women in exercise is important for physical and mental health.

Sex segregation in sport is vital at all levels including grass roots. We need to champion girls and women in staying active throughout their lives.

I will look out for the survey. Park Run has moved on from its original incarnation as a time trial and my view is that it is still not sure what it is but that’s my opinion which is of no importance to Park Run.

To those saying ‘but PR is inclusive!’ No one is excluded by being recorded under their sex as we all have one. I wouldn’t really care if people could choose to be recorded under gender identity instead of sex. Just keep the female category for females. Sports are recorded under sex for a reason, and that reason matters.

For those saying, it’s just a community fun run! Fine. Parkrun can stop collecting data on sex and age. People can just get their own individual time emailed to them. No comparison at all. Just you and your time.

If Parkrun collect data on sex and age it’s because they know it matters to running performance. And that it matters to runners.

Thwy won’t get rid of it as the men runners would go crazy. Women being treated unfairly by inaccurate data collection are being told women’s sport is not as important. Women have had to fight very hard for their sports to start to be treated seriously. What Park run is doing is a massively retrograde step in terms of how women in sport are perceived. Women in sport have only just started to be told they are taken seriously, and this failure to protect the female sex category is a clear message that women’s sport is not important after all, as fairness can be dispensed with.

What Parkrun is doing matters as it is part of a narrative that women’s amateur sport does not matter. Some people are saying, ‘yeah men shouldn’t be in women’s professional sport but it’s ok in amateur sports’. It’s not. Amateur sports people care about their sports and care about them being fair. Try telling men to accept an unfairness in their amateur sport. Try telling them you are going to get rid of scores and goals and leagues as it’s only a bit of fun so all that stuff is not important. And see how they react.

Women deserve equality and fairness and for what they do to be treated with as much respect as what men do is.

That’s why this matters. If you think what PR is doing is ok, you are saying disadvantaging women because of their sex is ok. And it’s not.

As you slow as you age the only way to assess your performance is to compare to your age and sex category. That is why this data is collected. So people can sensibly see how they are performing for their sex and age.

They are plenty of genuine fun and social runs you can join if that is what you want.

PR can decide it is a fun run and stop collecting data. Fair enough. But whilst it is collecting data, it needs to respect women by doing that fairly and accurately.

Its not demanding an organisation changes its ethos. Its expecting it to implement its chosen ethos in a way that does not disadvantage women. Parkrun decided that recording sex and age was important, and having a measured course and recording chipped times was important. It did that because it knows that age and sex are the two characteristics we all have that affect running performance. It knows this matters to runners and fairness and accuracy matters to runners. Hence the measured and chip timed course.

There are plenty of social and fun runs that you can join if that is what you want.

But Parkrun made and active choice not to be that. Deciding all this is important, but just not for women so we can be elastic about the whole sex thing, disadvantages women and that is sexism.

If parkrun wants to be a social run, that's just a bit of fun, just like all the many other social running clubs, it can do that and get rid of recording age and sex, and hell, even accurately measuring courses and times. That would be fair enough. It can decide to CHANGE its ethos to that.

But whilst its saying these things are important and it does by doing them, it has to do them in a way that is fairly implemented for women too.

Its rather dispiriting to hear women say that women wanting to be treated equally and fairly is somehow an outrageous entitled demand.

And as others have said on the thread, no, as you slow as you age, and you will, you cannot tell if you are improving by only looking at your times. You can only do this by looking at age and sex comparators. And that will only work if those are accurate. And PR knows this, and its why is collects that data.

I was over the moon to get 59.60% age grades score and 3rd in my age category this morning. I came 42 out of 147 runners so my age/gender information was definitely a better reflection of performance that the overall results.

I love parkrun. It has been hugely beneficial for me. i have done it several hundred times, very slowly, and clocked up lots and lots of volunteer stints. I missed it badly during lockdown and at the first parkrun after that I did my best time for a long time, purely because of the enormous psychological boost of running with lots of others for the first time in ages. I don't know what the answer to this conundrum is. parkrun doesn't check anything anybody says about themselves when they register. They could make up a name or only use part of a name, and some people clearly do, because all results are visible online and searchable, and there are obvious reasons why some people don't want to be identifiable in that way. They could be making up their age, again to make identification less likely or to game the stats. There is no way to police whether people register as F or M. The only answer I can see is for it to become socially unacceptable to claim to be F if you're actually M (and vice versa, but for reasons we all know that wouldn't affect anything very much in running). That's a much bigger change than parkrun, though.

This is a bigger issue than just parkrun, that bit is true.

However, I can't agree with the rest.

Firstly, Parkrun are not saying ' this is too difficult for us to police'. They are actually promoting their position as a principled one which makes sense. Its not principled to say female running is so unimportant that we can treat female runners unfairly and unequally. It doesn't make sense to record sports by gender identity rather than sex, as gender identity has no impact on sporting ability. You may as well record results by eye colour or the runner's favourite tree, because those have just as much impact on their sporting potential.

Secondly, Parkrun would not be expected to check everyone's age or sex. They could be expected to have a process where people can report if they feel someone is recorded in the wrong sex. Indeed Parkrun have changed the record of a man ran under his wife's parkrun id. That was no allowed to stand as a female time.

It might sometimes be challenging for them to do this. However they are a very large (international) organisation. And failure to do this is deprioritising women's running and women's amateur sports because ' oh its just too hard.', Which in itself shows how deeply Parkrun is infused with a culture that does not value women's sport. People find a way to do the things they think are important or that they value. Parkrun have not, as they have actively decided to prioritise gender ideology over women's basic rights. In this case, the right of women to fair and equal participation in sport.

Parkrun are currently trying to face both ways - to both say they are just a social run for a bit of fun and to say its important to accurately record times over a measured distance by age and sex, which they currently pump enormous resource into doing. Recording age and sex against running times cannot both be important and irrelevant, which is effectively what Parkrun are currently saying. They have to decide which of these two things they are, and whichever they pick, to value the integrity of women's sport and our equal and fair participation in running.

For those saying, it’s just a community fun run! Fine. Parkrun can stop collecting data on sex and age. People can just get their own individual time emailed to them. No comparison at all. Just you and your time

Yes, maybe that would be a better solution

Parkrun have said they might do exactly that.

I really hate the argument that it is 'more inclusive' to use gender than sex.

Everyone has a sex. Some people believe they have a gender identity. Parkrun choose to use a belief system that is not universally held to segregate people into categories, and give no option to state that you do not believe. That is the opposite of inclusive.

Plus the fact that sex is directly relevant to sporting performance, whilst gender is irrelevant.

Thank you @libertineagain this is really helpful and will enable me to be articulate when I fill in the survey!

I doubt they will though (that is stop reporting on age and sex and privately just send people their own time). Because (a) the men would hate it, and men hating things always seems to matter more than fairness to women (b) operating in the same way a race or time trail does with accurate courses and publicly displayed results is what makes parkrun distinct, and popular. You don't need Parkrun to record your time and privately send that to you . Anyone can record their time on a phone or smartwatch.

Its have the results publicly displayed, which gives a greater sense of achievement: its seeing how you compare which is valuable to many runners. And parkrun know this. Its reflected in the questions in the survey.

Without this, parkrun is no different from any other social run. Most parkruns around me struggle to get volunteers to run each week. The less distinctive Parkrun is, the less they offer the runners, the less incentive there is for volunteers to turn up and donate a morning in all weathers.

I do think it's coming. My theory is that they will change the name to parkfun and get rid of open results. They will still time people and you will know your overall position, but that will be it, and it will only be in the personal results email.

I don't think that they will get rid of timing altogether as that would kill parkrun as a concept.

Yes you can time yourself on your watch but that isn't the same, and it doesn't count for me. Only official times count (to me, and I doubt I am the only one that thinks that way. A Strava PB isn't a PB, a parkrun PB is a PB - to me.

I did fill in the survey but didn't even think of making any comments in the text box, rather stupidly.

Although as I get slower as I age, I am not sure I necessarily mind if the results become private ;)

As a middle aged woman, I am particularly pissed off as the only way I can tell if my running performance is declining, maintaining or improving is to compare myself to others in the same age or sex category. And I can only do this if the sex category is protected.

Surely the only way to tell if your performance is declining, maintaining or improving is to compare it with your own previous times? Another woman's score isn't going to tell you if you're getting faster or not. Which I believe was Parkrun's rationale here; Parkrun isn't a competition and the only stats that matter is whether you yourself are improving.

🙄 Totally missing the point of age grading here.

I take it you are either young or do no sport 😁

Runners get slower as they age. It’s why they are no 50 plus athletes in the Olympics 😁

As your absolute times will increase as you age, the only way you can see how your performance is decreasing / maintaining/ improving is seeing how you are doing relative to other people in your age and sex category.

(And no, any poster saying ‘well I am 50 and faster than ever’, is not an argument against this. All that means is that you are training more and/or better than you were in your 30s. If you training is the same, a 30 year old woman will be faster than a 50 year old woman).

It’s why they are no 50 plus athletes in the Olympics 😁

Unless you are a male identifying into the women's races at the Paralympics of course...
www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/13/now-the-paralympics-are-letting-men-race-against-women/

Your overall position is not that great if you are female or older is it? It is the age/ sex grading that is helpful. A PB is not that helpful as you age and are not able to improve on your PB.

One of the reasons Parkrun has been successful as a model is it provides the data people need to to keep them motivated and engaged, regardless of sex or age.

The only reason they will be changing this is because a small number of people don’t want to accept their sex is relevant to their sporting achievement. Because they have fallen for an irrational belief that gender identity replaces sex in all and every aspect of life. Instead of living as they please but recognizing they have a sex and there are times it matters. Like in running.

For everyone else, especially older people and wonen, to lose out because a few people insist on running under the opposite sex to their own, and Parkrun is too cowardly to stand up for women in sport, is tragic really.