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.

If there were adult runners registering with a false DOB and being the first finisher in the 11-14 category each week you can bet they'd suddenly find that "policing" the events was actually possible.

The line that it's difficult to police is nonsense to distract from the fact that they don't want to police it. On your profile you can literally switch from male to female and back as many times as you want and change how you appear in the results list. It would be the easiest thing in the world to prevent that but they choose not to.

There aren't categories that you run in at Park Run though. You all just run together, men , women, teens, kids, adults....
So to me it doesn't really matter. You're not racing against anyone but yourself. You're only cheating yourself if you put yourself down as 12 when you're really 37 or whatever.

Couldn't give a shit. Sometimes I run it, sometimes I marshal. It makes me happy. The only person's progression (or not) I care about is my own.
It is a fun community event. No need to get tied up in knots over what the occasional trans person is doing in comparison with me.

Parkrun have made it abundantly clear that they will not be adopting UKA rules, as they see themselves as a participation, not a competitive event. You're on a hiding to nowhere with this approach.

They have said that they will ditch results tables completely rather than go that route

Exactly, non competitive.
It's open to all to run,it's not about competition. If you're wanting that there's other more suitable, actual competitive runs for your needs instead of moaning at Parkrun.

Actually, there are plenty of other social running groups which would appear to be more suitable to YOUR needs, rather than you moaning at women asking that PR implement the way it consciously chose to set itself up as, in a way which does not disadvantage women.

You don't care about comparison. Fine. You don't care about competition. Fine. You'd be better of joining one of the plethora of social running groups that cater to your needs, rather than criticising women asking for fairness in the way ParkRun chose to set itself up.

And actually, parkrun know many of its runners do care about competition. They ask about it in the survey.

It's open to all to run,it's not about competition

@TofuTart It may interest you to know that most races are open to all to run. And nearly all the runners are not competing to win a place. A bit like Parkrun really.

And yet, Parkrun have set themselves up to put huge effort into collecting all that category data for 100's of thousands of people every week. What wonders why when its was always so pointless, according to you.

You have a remarkable confidence that how you see things is how everyone should. The kid in the 12 year age category might care that a 37 year old man took what would have been her/his first placing for his age category, even if you don't. And he's right too. Parkrun gathered that data because they knew if mattered to many of their runners. Even if not you.

But then, you think expecting organisations to gather data, they have decided its important to gather, in a way that doesn't disadvantage women, or other groups, is 'moaning'.

It's funny how men are allowed to be competitive at parkrun but if women want to be, they are told to go and find a competitive race instead.

Now why could that be, I wonder?

No, I stand by my it's not a competition, it's a fun run comments when it comes to the men as well.

Age grading isn't based on who else is running parkrun so you can use those stats as you always have to gauge your own performance for your age.

I mean, I'm all for PR changing to recognise sex but this really doesn't work as an argument. Those who are happy with how PR works can just as easily tell you that you need to go find your own group if you aren't happy with how things are. There are after all loads of events (any UKA-affiliated event for a start), that do enforce sex categories.

Hear hear. I’m suspicious about how many on here are regular park run go-ers or just pushing their own agenda. I love seeing where I came in the run and trying to improve my time, see how my friends go. Why would I care what the occasional trans person does, as you say. I hope PR keeps ignoring this lobby. I would be really fed up if they got rid of publishing our times.

But PR doesn't work. It has a completely incoherent system. Its incoherent as it was set up to acknowledge the difference age and sex makes to running performance and then publishing results so that people can assess their performance at the run against similar others. PR has always recognised that runners enjoy this comparative and competitive element, and recognise it in their recent survey by asking questions about it. Its hardly surprising that this is part of PR culture as it was started by runners and this is part of running culture.

Allowing people to be recorded under gender identity is nonsensical as that does not affect running performance. Now PR and their supporters are claiming its just a ' participation event' to avoid having to be fair to women as that would upset some males. And that is age old sexism. We can tell that it never was 'just a participation event' as PR would never have collected and published times against age and sex if it were. I mean, you don't need them to publish that, if it is just about your own time as you already know your age and sex, right?

All the defenders on here have to ignore why PR collected age and sex in the first place to make your case.

PR have a particular system. Asking for that to be fair to women is not 'moaning',. If you don't like women standing up for their rights within a system. because you don't think the system should be like that anyway, then yeah, its you who should join a group that better reflects your non-comparative, non-competitive ethos.

And all the defenders also have to ignore that this issue with PR is part of a wider drive to remove the female sex category in sport. The English cricket board has just announced people can play by gender identity in the amateur league despite this being both unfair and dangerous to women, due the greater force men can hit balls with. But again, its just to hard to be fair and safe to women and its only a bit of fun to get people participating, and it would cause to much unpleasantness to keep it single sex, eh?

I think there's a high chance of it happening. Although as mentioned above, you'll still need an overall position to link with your barcode, so you'll know that you eg came 80th overall.

But you won't know where you came in the women, or your age group, unless they continue to tell you that in the email.

Nobody else will be able to see the results.

I am maybe being pessimistic but I think they want to do that. They know doing away with the timing will be the kiss of death, but doing away with public results (probably) won't.

It will be interesting to see what the results of the survey are and if they take any notice if it doesn't fit in with their ethos.

And once again, grass roots sport matters. Many youngsters go onto higher level athletics as a result of doing parkrun, and older people may do Masters/veterans competitions. It's not fair to push women away to include a few people who think they need to be male to wear a dress. Maybe parkrun could take a stand on gender/sex stereotyping instead.

Here's what I put in the survey:

I love being part of the parkrun community and I love the ethos of the event, but I feel deeply let down by your policy of gathering stats by gender identity rather than sex.

If you think sex is a meaningful category for sports performance (like age), clearly ask people to declare their sex, not their gender identity. People can declare their gender identity as well if it matters to them. And their favourite colour perhaps. If you don't think sex is a meaningful category, don't ask the question at all.

I want to know how my times compare with other female people my age. I'm not interested in how my times compare with other people who think they have a woman gender identity. Just as I'm not interested in how my times compare with other people who have the same favourite colour as me. Neither internal identity, nor favourite colour, affect how fast you can run. People run with their bodies, not their identities.

I know you can't police what people put into a form, but you can set the expectation of what category you consider important. Your current policy makes it clear that you prioritise the desire of trans identified males to feel validated over women's rights to fair competition and the integrity of a female category.

I may be a slow 'fun runner', but I'm still incredibly insulted by this, and it has really soured my feelings about the event as a whole.

Very well put @WhatAMessWales - I wish I believed that parkrun care, but its very clear that they don't care about women's feelings about fairness. The uselessness of gender identity question is very important. In other forms where I fed back to organisations asking about gender identity, I compared it to which hogwarts house people are in - it is SO irrelevant and has no bearing on anything else you might tell them.

I got emailed about it but when I tried to complete the survey I fell at the very first hurdle as page one asked me what my Gender is. Unfortunately I couldn't continue the survey without ticking a box so I didn't complete it.

I did email them to explain why though. Suggested they might want to add the option 'I don't have a gender identity'

I don't suppose they will though 🙄

@Elizo I completely agree with you, both in terms of wondering how many people on here genuinely care about Parkrun specifically rather than their own agenda and also that the very few trans women who have entered as women are going to skew the results enough to be an actual problem.

I was actually starting to be swayed by the Op, until she said to another runner:

"You don't care about comparison. Fine. You don't care about competition. Fine. You'd be better of joining one of the plethora of social running groups that cater to your needs."

Why should this poster have to find another group? Comparison and competition are not the only reasons for wanting to join in with Parkrun. In fact, as the survey suggests, there are a multitude of reasons and that is the very brilliant thing about Parkrun: it is for everyone. I actually do care about fairness in womens' sport, but if I had to choose between a trans woman joining my local Parkrun tomorrow morning, and the Op who believes that people who are there for the mere social, mental or physical health benefits would be "better off" somewhere else, then I know who I'd be going with.

I get that Parkrun could take a stance by going with sex over gender but I wish people here would just say that they want this in order to make a point, rather than making up rubbish about it genuinely and significantly impacting times, age grades etc. The far more likely outcome, as many people have pointed out here, is that Parkrun simply stop publishing all results and just email individual ones, which would be infinitely more frustrating for so many more people.

There are many companies worth criticising and so many reasons for which to do so - going for the one that does so much for so many (and is mostly run by volunteers!) seems like misdirected energy and, in fact, risks changing the communication of results for the worst.

If it does rankings, it IS competitive, @TofuTart .

Parkrun itself isn't competitive though.
There's no categories when you run.
You all just start running together.
There's no "winners"or "losers."
Just people out for a run.
Fun runners, joggers, people out to try and get a bit of fresh air, do something with their Saturday mornings, and I've even someone walk round with a buggy and their baby.
Which is why it's so great. That there's no competitive element.
It's competitive only if you go home and look up results and compare yourself to what everyone else is or isn't doing. Whether you're female, male, trans, not trans, adult, child.

There clearly are categories because people register in sex categories, and, times are publicly listed.

So it's categorised, and it's competitive.

Have you ever been to and taken part in a Park Run?

So it's categorised, and it's competitive

Not when you're running/jogging. Only when you go home and look up how you did time wise.
Whether that's if you're just wanting to see how you did time wise against "Past You"last week, or comparing yourselves to others.
It's only competitive if you make it so.