I havn't done a Park Run yet but only because I generally work Saturday mornings. The last marathon I entered (actually it was a little over at 27.2 miles) cost £8,50 to enter and for that you had breakfast, there were sandwiches at the checkpoints*, and there was table service chilli at the finish.
You really don't need to hit up the inner city HM's, 10k's and mara's. Most fell races are less than £8 and you'll get tea, coffee, cake, and stuff......and, believe me, some are tough. The Brecon Beacons fell is coming up in a couple of weeks - 19 miles/500ft/£8; can't fault it.
*i was first man home so skipped on these, but you catch my drift.
If you join an athletic club you will also get reductions in entrance fees, also the FRA.
Loads of people have got into running through parkrun and my view is that it increases the pool of people who might do club races in the future. Win win.
No real way of qualifying that but it would be nice if it where true. There may be just as much chance of a substitution affect which would be ad for clubs.
I agree with what you say. Anyone who knows their running can appreciate what it takes to run sub 15 for 5K. Sadly not everyone will be able to meet that standard, but Joe Average will be able to stumble round "The Beast" and tell everyone about it at work on a Monday.
The first problem is to make people aware of these local races and to me this is where working with parkrun will help. People see races like the Manchester 10K (because frankly you cannot miss it) and assume that all races cost that much. The clubs have to educate them, if you can work with parkrun at the very least you get access to 10000 people a week.
Matt
Parkrun concept is mostly great. Running can definitely be cheap though - via the club I get free road runs and cross country through the winter. Summer multi-terrain runs for a quid a go. Via the general calendar, loads of reasonably priced events every week of the year within say an hour, most with a £2 discount. Fell runs typically about £4, and a whole shedload of fun.
I think clubs and park runs can go together well. The members of one of the local clubs also run the local park run, so there's a great cross-over.
Matt's on ball about education though. I've met people at work who have genuinely thought that the London Marathon is the only marathon length race held in the country.
Meanwhile the LDWA will be holding several marathon length events every weekend with food and drink for around 5 quid.
I think breaking 15 mins for 5k is a worthy challenge and far greater than novelty events which seem to be more attractive of late. I would argue these are easier to compete in as the "unusuallness" of them detracts from the competition.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but sub 15 minutes? I think 16m or 17m is an equally worthy goal for some of us lesser mortals 😉
The course record for the Sheffield Hallam race is 15m23s.
I reckon an equally worthy goal would be to just enjoy every run 🙂
I don't think i've ever enjoyed a single 5km i've ever raced 😀
I think 16m or 17m is an equally worthy goal for some of us lesser mortals
My response was to someone who claimed that people are looking for "more of a challenge" I was making the point that simply striving to run fast is a big enough challenge. "fast" being a relative term and you are right 19, 19 or 25 mins. All worthy goals.
Edit: I never squeezed inside 15 myself BTW. Close but no Cigar!
20 would be good enough for me !
